That Which Never Happened, and Never Will Be
by Swyfte
Summary: PureClan does not exist. It never has. or, the pureclan au that's not about pureclan. a three-shot, and a birthday present.
1. the beginning that was never written

They are born into a world where a callous revolutionary failed to lead their forebears astray. Her mad words and dark notions did not sway them; they cast her out and left her to scheme alone. In this world, they did not fail the test set before them, glorious and terrible in its very nature. They were, they discovered, not afraid of poison in the least.

* * *

Leader: Oakstar- old tabby tom with white underbelly

Deputy: Morningstorm- lean golden she-cat with small tawny dapples

Medicine Cat: Specklefrost- speckled brown she-cat with wide blue eyes

Apprentice: Sedgewing- cream tom with faint brown patches

Warriors:

Thornstreak- dark brown tabby tom with tufted tail

Apprentice: Nettlepaw

Gorsespots- ginger tabby tom with white belly, chin and legs

Honeyleap- dark golden tabby she-cat

Apprentice: Silverpaw

Swiftstream- stocky grey tom with green eyes

Apprentice: Jaypaw

Bramblenose- stocky red-brown tabby tom

Meadowmist- white she-cat with green eyes

Apprentice: Sablepaw

Icecloud- icy grey tom with thin grey flecks

Toadstep- thin brown tom with warm amber eyes

Apprentice: Pepperpaw

Redsong- red she-cat with patches of white

Swanpath- lithe white she-cat with black paws and muzzle

Embertooth- thin black she-cat with green eyes

Apprentice: Smokepaw

Fussyfur- spiky-furred grey tabby tom

Littlefern- creamy fawn she-cat with brown rosettes

Stripethorn- pale brown tabby with blue eyes

Apprentice: Rainpaw

Sparkpool- plump ginger she-cat

Sleetclaw- pale grey tom with blue-grey patches

Apprentices:

Jaypaw- blue-grey she-cat

Smokepaw- dark grey tom with pale, subtle stripes

Rainpaw- dappled grey she-cat

Nettlepaw- fawn she-cat with brown dapples

Pepperpaw- dark tabby tom with bold black stripes and white chest

Sablepaw- sleek black she-cat with bright green eyes

Silverpaw- long-furred grey she-cat with darker dapples

Queens:

Morningstorm: lean golden she-cat with small tawny dapples (nursing Strongkit- fluffy white tom with patches of pale tabby and cream; Sunkit- bright yellow she-kit with one white paw)

Miststreak- pale grey tabby she-cat, nursing Toadstep's kits (nursing Streamkit- white she-kit with thin brown stripes; Pinekit- russet tom with dark back and tail)

Elders:

Palefur- pure white long-furred she-cat

Budgiewing- pale blue-grey tom with rheumy amber eyes

Tawnyfrost- thin tawny she-cat with ginger paws and belly

RiverClan:

Leader: Crowstar

Deputy: Hawkstorm

Warriors:

Snowfeather

Gullstorm

Apprentices:

Hailpaw

Whitepaw

ThunderClan:

Leader: Fernstar

Deputy: Willowmist

Warriors:

Robinstreak

Mistystripe

Apprentices:

Honeypaw

Lilypaw

Fleetpaw

Eaglepaw

WindClan:

Leader: Splashstar

Deputy: Lionfrost

Warriors:

Goldenfur

Heatherfoot

Specklefrost

Apprentices:

Frostpaw

Mousepaw

Gorsepaw

* * *

The forest, filled with afternoon light and a seasonal glow, is quiet. Mostly. The air beneath the canopy reverberates the sound of youthful laughter. Leaves crunch under rapid footsteps and small shapes rocket through the undergrowth. Caution is for the elderly; restraint is something they do not concern themselves with.

"Slow down, Sablepaw!"

One figure darts in front of the rest, weaving through the currents of the undergrowth with ease. She is unbound, unfettered, unchecked. Her friends call out behind her, but Sablepaw likes the taste of competition, the thrill of winning. It has always been so. Three trail behind her, hardly even trying, because they've never placed their prerogatives on victory. Two are a pale, dappled grey; they could be sisters, but their relation is in appearance only. The third bounces as she runs, a mouse hanging from her jaws, the sole profit of today's outing.

"You'll have to catch me first!"

The group crashes through the undergrowth and onto a well-worn path, bleached and baked by the sun despite the verdant canopy. A distant murmur rises in the air, and the lagging trio struggle to catch up.

"I told you we'd be late!" Sablepaw says, throwing her words into the wind, but there's no consternation in her voice. In truth, she's mostly apathetic, but this is expected of her. And she's never Silverpaw would never let her hear the end of it if they missed even the smallest part of it. At this, Silverpaw squeaks and hurries forward, leaving Rainpaw and Nettlepaw to lag behind.

"I told him we'd be there!"

They burst into the clearing at haste; to Silverpaw's dismay, the Clan is already huddled beneath Oakstar on his wooden pedestal, clinging to the worn roots of the tree with thin claws. With an expression of contrite abashment on her face, Silverpaw slinks to join the back of the crowd. Sablepaw is more reluctant- she understands the importance the Clan places on these things, but they drag on incessantly. She always has to strain to catch Oakstar's words.

"-Sunpaw, your mentor will be Bramblenose. Bramblenose, you have worked hard to be a part of this Clan and have proven again and again your strength as a warrior. I expect you to pass all of your hard-won knowledge down to Sunpaw."

At the head of the assembly, the newly named Sunpaw bounces forward to bump noses with her new mentor. She recalls the excitement of her own ceremony, though she had not been so eager to bump any part of her body to Meadowmist's. The white queen has always been a formidable figure, and no new facsimile of a mentor-apprentice relationship would improve her temper.

"It's his turn!" her sister whispers, as Sablepaw rolls her eyes. For some inexplicable reason, she's formed an unholy alliance with that tiny puff of fur. Behind them, Nettlepaw snorts.

"Strongkit!" Oakstar announces, still managing to sound regal even with the perpetual quaver in his voice. "You have reached the age of six moons, and, as such, it is time for you to be apprenticed."

Strongkit sits patiently at the head of the crowd, though his tail twitches with excitement. Sablepaw can practically hear her sister gushing with pride. Though two moons older, they'd maintained an odd sort of camaraderie which, Sablepaw supposed, was only going to get worse again now that they would be sharing a den. Sablepaw loved her sister, without reservations, but she could be overbearing at times. When combined with that conceited chatterbox...Sablefrost wondered if she'd be sleeping any time soon. She liked his sister well enough, but perhaps that was because she didn't walk around acting as though she had a pedigree stuck up her ass.

Silverpaw squeaked, and she snapped to attention. Distracted by her antipathy, she hadn't noticed Strongkit's rapid transcension into Strongpaw at the behest of a few old words. White whiskers trembling, Oakstar announces that Strongpaw will be trained by Icecloud.

"Oakstar looks like a small breeze could push him over," Sablepaw muttered, leaning back into Nettlepaw. "He ought to be in the elder's den." Nettlepaw laughed, and Rainpaw made an undignified sort of scoff.

"He is still your leader, apprentices. He deserves your respect." From her seat in front, Morningstorm turned to give them a cool glance. The crowd has begun to chant her children's names, but she pays them no heed. Sablepaw had not even noticed her, but bows her head now to the deputy anyway. In that instant, Meadowmist ceases to be the most intimidating presence she has ever encountered. "Something to think about if you ever wish to be his warriors one day." With that, she inclines her head and stalks off, presumably to offer up some small congratulations to her kits.

As she departs, Silverpaw turns to shoot her a mortified glare. "Look what you did! She probably hates us now. What if she doesn't let us be warriors?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Rainpaw says, coming to stand beside them. "Sablepaw only said what everyone is thinking." They watch Oakstar climb down from his perch with uncertain movements, every step shakier than the last.

"Speaking of," Nettlepaw says, in an airy tone of announcement, "I'm going to take my mouse to the elders. I'm a _good_ apprentice."

"Wow, they might even tell you a _story_ ," Sablepaw retorted. There's no malice- there never has been- but Sablepaw can never resist an opportunity.

"I might be so lucky!" Nettlepaw says, faking a dramatic gasp before she picks up her mouse and trots away, a jaunty kink to her tail. Rainpaw shrugs and follows her, perhaps lusting after the aforementioned story time. Sablepaw watches them go, but has no desire to join them; Palefur always tries to regale her with stories of her glory days, all of which seem to be severely embellished.

Silverpaw begins speaking behind her, but Sablepaw has turned her attention to the crowd. Her brother, Pepperpaw, is on the fringes, a disgruntled expression on his face; Embertooth, once again, is trying to coddle him. Smokepaw is hanging around- whether for his mentor or his friend, she's not sure. Thornstreak watches them with an amused smile. Sablepaw loves her family, honestly, but Silverpaw has always been her favourite. There's something softer, sweeter in her than the rest. Sablepaw can't help but feel they're a perfect imbalance, ice and light, snark and honey.

As she turns around, Sablepaw realises she's standing in front of one of the things the two will never agree about; Silverpaw has always had a penchant for taking in small, unwanted things, and Strongpaw is no exception. Her sister is blind to his arrogance; according to her, Strongpaw is the best friend she'll ever have, and Sablepaw is petty enough to hate him for it. She doesn't see the attraction, really, but thinks that suddenly they may be about to spend much, much more time together.

"Congratulations," Sablepaw says thinly, as the pair turn to her. Sunpaw is already gone, no doubt taking a tour of the territory like a good apprentice ought to. Silverpaw gives her a warm smile for _socialising_.

"Ah, it speaks," Strongpaw says, bending to lick his chest. "We were going to get some moss. Do you want to join us?"

"You can sleep on the ground, for all I care," she replies, ignoring the warning look that has replaced her sister's smile. _Progress undone. Good_. Strongpaw shrugs, a suit-yourself expression plain in his eyes. Many things may be said of the tom, but he does not, at least, have thin skin. Silverpaw ushers him away after that.

He doesn't say another word to her for two moons.

* * *

Sablepaw was always meant to be a warrior, to run and hunt and flay skin from flesh with her claws. She born to it, the wild freedom and the hunger of liberty. This is true for her brother. Pepperpaw idealises their father, builds him up to some great primal hero in his mind, but he has no delusions; the life of a warrior is simple, and he will never complicate it. The same is not always true for Silverpaw. None of them realise this, at first.

They all train as hard as each other; Smokepaw and Pepperpaw have a grudging, tentative friendship built on thrashing the other apprentices in the training arena. Jaypaw, however, is better than their best efforts combined, but she only lords this fact over Pepperpaw. Rainpaw and Nettlepaw are content to finish at the bottom of the pack, but scrapping together always seems to be a great source of entertainment for the both of them. They're enthusiastic, if nothing more, and the same can be said for Silverpaw, who has great vim but little technique. Sablepaw, despite her overbearing mentor, remains average, stoically so.

She gets paired with Strongpaw. It's not like she's supposed to teach him anything, but she'll be handy for him to walk over to build his confidence. Something of a mild challenge, but nothing more than a stiff push-over. Sablepaw tries not to get offended, but who is she kidding? She's livid.

"Go easy on me," Strongpaw says, smirking, as they face off for the first time. In the far corner of the arena, Sunpaw and Silverpaw roll around giggling. Strongpaw is already covered in dust, his mottled fur sticking up in patches, but he's already just as tall as she is. He's twice the tiny pipsqueak he was just two moons ago.

"Get real," Sablepaw replies, licking a paw. "You'll be picking sand out of your pelt for _moons_."

"This isn't a pissing content," Meadowmist growls, with a glare at Icecloud. The pale grey tom just shrugs, looking faintly amused. "Get on with it."

There's no time for expressions of apologetic appeasement. Strongpaw drops into a crouch; even his snarl is arrogant, self-assured. Sablepaw mirrors his pose; the crouch is comfortable and familiar to her, even though she's not the best fighter of her group. She bares her teeth; she doesn't care what Meadowmist says. Posturing is half the battle. They creep closer as Meadowmist shouts instructions. Sablepaw leaps first, determined to dismantle his confidence, ruin the false shield of his pedigree. He twists, faster than she expects, and she lands grasping at pawfuls of dust.

Strongpaw strikes the first blow, a mild cuff over her ears. She hisses at him; she is not fragile, she is not so easily broken. "Are you going to _poke_ your enemies till they run away?" she growls, backing up a step; from here, she can see that _smirk_. He darts at her, kicking up puffs of dirt under his paws. The black apprentice meets him head on, colliding with his charge and rolling with his movements, until her momentum lands her on top. She pins him with a victorious snarl, but Strongpaw has not conceded yet. He kicks up violently, aiming his paws at her soft stomach. There's little strength in his wiry limbs, for now, and she does not go far- she lands in front of him, coughing faintly, and he claims the win as his own.

A simply as that, their rivalry ascends to a new tier.

They spar for the rest of the afternoon. Strongpaw has a slight physical advantage, but Sablepaw memorises and counters his moves with ease. They're essentially equals, but she feels a sharp spike of pride whenever she manages to come out, briefly, on top.

"Alright, kids," Meadowmist says, smothering a yawn. "Go for a walk or something. Cool off." She leaves abruptly, sounding a little hoarse; she's mostly been shouting advice at the pair of them, and growing increasingly frustrated as they fail to follow it. Icecloud lingers, murmuring something into Strongpaw's ear as he leaves. Sablepaw limps over to her sister; Silverpaw, apparently, has had a grand old time rolling around in the dirt with her new pal Sunpaw.

"Sablepaw!" she squeals, clouding the air with debris from her pelt as she shakes it off. "Is Strongpaw still in one piece?"

She rolls her eyes, glancing back at the tom; he's trotting over, a cocky swagger to his step that does not speak of being bodily thrown on the ground far more than once. "Unfortunately," she mutter dryly. Unsurprisingly, Sunpaw is the only one to laugh at this. Silverpaw shrugs the wayward comment aside.

"Let's go for a walk," Silverpaw suggests. "Bramblenose, would you like to join us?" Sablepaw had not seen Sunpaw's mentor, who had been sitting in the shadows of bracken. She stares at him for a moment: his ruddy fur, bright eyes, the scar that tears across his lip. He was not born in the Clan, she knows that much, but the rest of him remains a mystery.

"Sure," the warrior replies, shrugging with congenial ease. "Someone has to keep you lot from trouble."

The five of them set off; Silverpaw leads the group, flanked by the two toms. Sablepaw finds herself walking with Sunpaw. Though she's related to both Morningstorm and Strongpaw, she shares none of their conceited airs. They have an amicable conversation; she's merely glad to have a conversation that doesn't mention/include Strongpaw. Up ahead, Silverpaw's giggle is continuous.

The sky above the canopy is swathed in streaks of yellow and pink; the air is balmy, almost tropical. Sablepaw feels youthful; for a long time, she never feels as young as she did this evening, making stilted conversation with a cat she hardly knows. She was born with a sense of infallibility, a complete and utter lack of her own mortality. They walk down a darkening path, none the wiser. Strongpaw is the first to smell it.

"What's that?" he asks, head raised in the air. Sablepaw just rolls her eyes dismissively. Strongpaw will make a mountain out of a molehill, if given the chance. Bramblenose follows his lead, inhaling a deep lungful of the warm summer air. Against her best instincts, Sablepaw gives in and does the same; there's a sharp, copper tint to the breeze, one not entirely unfamiliar.

Strongpaw scrambles off the worn path they stand on, disappearing into the undergrowth as Bramblenose shouts after him. Muttering curses under his breath, the red-brown tom plunges in after him. Not one to be left out of things, Sablepaw follows immediately. If Strongpaw's getting a scolding, she's sure as hell going to be there to witness it. The crashing behind her informs her that at least _one_ remaining apprentice has followed her in.

The group comes to a halt on the edge of a tiny clearing. It's not a graceful stop; Strongpaw slides onto his haunches, Bramblenose trips over his tail and Sablepaw collides with the former. Silverpaw stumbles into the warrior and Sunpaw, of all of them, manages to stop without a misstep. She guesses it's the blood. No one wants to get their paws wet.

It's not immediately clear what they're looking at; Sablepaw processes it only as a misshapen bloody lump, perhaps some kind of fox or rogue. It has white fur, beneath the blood, and its mouth gapes open in an unheard scream. It has green eyes much like her own mentor's, she thinks offhandedly. It becomes clear that it's a cat.

"Sunpaw, go find Oakstar," Bramblenose says, unevenly. "He needs to be the first to know."

Sunpaw nods and dashes away. Silverpaw quails against the ground as she goes. For some ungodly, unknown reason, she locks eyes with Strongpaw and doesn't look away.

"StarClan," Bramblenose says, almost to himself. "I saw her this morning. She was talking to the kits."

 _It's a Clan cat_ , she thinks, distanced from it all. She looks a bit closer, staring past the blood and gore. If Bramblenose, an outsider, can figure out who it is, then she ought to know too. But she can't. This thing has no identity, no face to name. It's a creature of blood and death, and Sablepaw has never known death.

"Palefur," Strongpaw whispers, catching her eye again.

"Who did this?" she whispers back, but he has no answer for this.

"Look, there's tracks," Bramblenose announces, pointing to the far side of the clearing. No murder this messy could be escapable without leaving a trail; blood pools in the leaf litter and torn dirt of the forest floor, and an incriminating set of paw prints has splashed right through it. "They still seem fresh."

"Let's go then," Sablepaw says, sounding calmer than she feels. "We have a chance of catching up to it if we leave now." She gives Bramblenose a hard stare; she knows she's right. The older tom, however, just shakes his head.

"It's best to stay here in case someone comes along. Besides, your sister is in no state to track down whatever beast is out there." He's half right, at least; Silverpaw has not moved from her position on the ground, staring, with hollow eyes, and the gruesome scene before her. Silverpaw was never one for gore and gristle.

"We'll split up then. Bramblenose, you can stay here with Silverpaw. Sablepaw and I will go track it down." It's Strongpaw's suggestion, and she is surprised to find herself agreeing with him. Bramblenose opens his mouth to object, but Strongpaw continues before he can. "If we find it, we won't attack it. We'll make a note of what and where it is, and go find some warriors or something."

"Very well," the warrior replies, after a small moment of consideration. "Be careful. I want you back in camp before dark. Stay hidden."

"We will," Sablepaw says quickly, before he changes his mind. She shares another glance with Strongpaw, before they begin to edge around the pools of blood on the ground. Before they leave the clearing, careful not to disturb the dark tracks before them, she looks back at her sister. Bramblenose sits by her side, tail resting over her flanks. He's saying something, but it doesn't seem as though Silverpaw is listening. Wordlessly, Sablepaw turns around and leaves the clearing. They walk for a while in concentrated silence, watching the pawprints as though they might spring up from the ground and attack them. She lets Strongpaw lead them along, still not entirely sure how all this is making her feel- for once, he has no snarky comment or witty barb for her.

He motions for silence as a sound fills the air, as though she hasn't been creeping along without so much as stepping on a twig. It's a burbling, restless murmur; the harmless mumbling of a small stream. She just watches as Strongpaw flattens his ears to his skull.

The brook appears before them with no form of heraldry. The drops of blood and dark pawprints descend into the water; there are no tracks on the other side, no scent in the air to track. Strongpaw swears under his breath.

"We lost them," he murmurs, glaring into the mild current.

"There's nothing more we can do," she says gently, staring at the opposing bank. "We never would've found her if it weren't for you, anyway. Whatever it was, it will turn up sooner or later, and the Clan will take care of it."

"Take a close look," he says in return, gesturing at the patchy pawprints, faint and viscous. She squints down at them, the unassuming familiarity of their shape.

"Are you saying..?"

"Those belong to a cat," he says tightly. "I don't know if Bramblenose noticed. It could've been a rogue, sure, but it also could've been anyone in the Clan. Do you trust your mother, Sablepaw? Your father?"

She doesn't rise to this bait. The sun, after all, is sinking into the horizon, and there's nothing more they can do. "Let's go back to camp. It will be dark soon."

* * *

Embertooth ambushes the pair of them as they hurry into camp. The sun is seconds from disappearing entirely, and the two apprentices are filled with chills they can't shake.

"Where were you two?" she cries, throwing herself into Sablepaw's path. She presses a lick against her daughter's head. "I've been worried half to death, poor Bramblenose is up to his ears in trouble, and your sister won't speak to _anyone_!" She gives her kit a hard look, though Sablepaw had already suspected their actions wouldn't sit well with the senior warriors of the Clan. "Hello, Strongpaw," her mother adds, giving him a far warmer glance. "Your mother would like to speak with you."

Strongpaw just grimaces.

She is ushered across the camp to where her father sits with Pepperpaw. Silverpaw is nowhere to be seen; coincidentally, neither is Bramblenose. Thornstreak looks pensive, although this is nothing new. Sablepaw greets her brother with a shrug, which he returns with equal indifference. Their parents are worriers; they always have and will be. It is only now, Sablepaw fears, that there's a real threat out there worth worrying about. Embertooth presses a mouse into her paws as she sits.

"Was there lots of blood?" Pepperpaw asks, ripping into a vole. Small drops of blood spray across the ground. She didn't have much of one to begin with, but any trace of her appetite is now gone. She pushes the dead mouse away.

"Yes," Sablepaw says, avoiding the sight of her brother tearing into his meal with gusto. "I'd rather not talk about it." Embertooth hums with sympathy and lays her tail over her back.

"You should go rest," she urges. "Things won't seem so bleak in the morning."

"Tell that to Oakstar," her brother mutters, around a mouthful of meat. He has the audacity to look wounded after Thornstreak slaps his shoulder. Sablepaw just snorts and pads towards the apprentice den. It's empty, much to her relief.

She rests uneasily that night.

* * *

HAPPY BIRTHDAY URIE

this will be a three-shot but i have 0 time

there will be death and murder and love, don't worry


	2. the path that was never taken

hello!- some preliminary notes

1) i looked at a certain cat in the allegiances and went "he doesn't have an apprentice!" he did. my bad.

2) it's been a year since this has been updated, so what. it is aging finely, like a wine

3) i write most of this in what seems now like a fever dream so... idk

4) MOST IMPORTANTLY THIS IS MY AMAZING WIFEY'S B-DAY PRESENT, SHE DESERVES THIS AND SO MUCH MORE

* * *

The horror of Palefur's murder soon fades. The apprentices banded together in a pretense of safety, at first; the fear and tension wore out, but they remained a closely knit group. Oakstar, however, does not spring back so quickly. The elder had been his mate. As far as Sablepaw knows, Meadowmist and Stripethorn are the only family he has left. He's ancient, really, and his mate's death was an imminent thing, but he perhaps had not expected her to end like this. No one had. The killer was hunted across the territory, but they had vanished in a discreet, clean manner, and they found no further trace of it. Sablepaw suspected Oakstar would bring it up at the Gathering- bring it up in the most accusing tone he could muster. RiverClan were masters of the water, and it was improbable that even one cat in the Clan hadn't considered the possibility of their involvement.

"Are you excited for the Gathering?" Silverpaw asks, as they wake in the morning. "You've been doing really well, I'm sure they'll let you go."

Sablepaw shrugs. She hasn't been to one before; even Strongpaw has, and that rankles. "What about you?" she asks, dodging around the question. She refuses to get her hopes up, the way she has done for the past three moons.

"I've already been," she says lightly, in an airy tone of uncaring. Sablepaw wonders if it's forced, for her sake. "I guess it was alright."

"Alright?" Strongpaw butts in, from his nest nearby. "It was _brilliant_. I met so many cats." He pauses, and wiggles his eyebrows inelegantly. "Mostly she-cats." He can barely be heard over the sound of Sablepaw's scoffing.

"I bet they couldn't keep their paws off you," Silverpaw says, in a rare tone that could be entirely genuine or slightly sarcastic. She is related to Sablepaw, after all. "Let's go outside. They'll probably be announcing it any second now."

They exit the den, but Silverpaw is not exactly right. They eat breakfast, make light-hearted quips, endure some mild teasing from Pepperpaw, and whittle away half the morning while doing so. Oakstar is nowhere in sight, and neither is the deputy. This, however, is nothing unusual.

Rainpaw and Nettlepaw join them after a while, laden with prey as they trot back into camp. They're gushing about the Gathering, certain their hard work has earned them a spot on the guest list. Sablepaw notices something is different about Rainpaw; she giggles more, and casts odd sidelong glances at Strongpaw. She wants to put it down to a bad meal, but her behaviour unsettles something her stomach. It's almost, she thinks, how Silverpaw acts around him too. Here, Sablepaw is the anomaly.

They all scramble to their paws as Morningstorm strides out of Oakstar's den. Once again, the leader is nowhere to be seen, but they've grown to expect this. She is resplendent in the early afternoon light, fur alight with a polished sheen. Sablepaw often wonders where Strongpaw gets his patchy white-and-brown pelt from- it certainly wasn't his mother.

"Attention, please," she yowls, leaping elegantly onto a low-hanging branch. She doesn't need to command it; she has it already. "Oakstar and I have made the necessary discussions to decide who will attend tonight's Gathering. I will go with Embertooth, Toadstep, Meadowmist, Strongpaw, Honeyleap, Stripethorn, Swanpath and Sablepaw. Unfortunately, Oakstar will be unable to attend. That will be all."

Sablepaw turns to Silverpaw with a smile on her face. " _Finally!_ " she exclaims, exchanging a glance with Strongpaw. "Maybe she doesn't hate me after all." Nettlepaw bumps their shoulder together, unable to entirely keep the sour expression off her face. Silverpaw, however, is staring off into the distance. Following her gaze, she sees it settle on Bramblethorn, alone and forlorn on the edge of camp.

"He's still in trouble," she sighs, darting a furtive look at her sister. "If you hadn't insisted on-"

"We couldn't let the killer waltz merrily on their way if there was a chance we could catch them," Sablepaw argued. "That would've been stupid. Even you know that."

Silverpaw's tail lashes, and Sablepaw steps back. They rarely fight like this; she's normally the one to diffuse the situation before it worsens.

"It was the right thing to do," Strongpaw adds. "Bramblenose knows that. That's why he let us go."

" _Hello_ ," Rainpaw says loudly. "We're missing the important thing here. Oakstar's not going! It must be for the first time, in like, a decade."

"Maybe he's carked it?" Nettlepaw muses. "Maybe Morningstorm doesn't want the whole Clan to panic."

"Don't be ridiculous," Strongpaw replies. "The first thing she'd do is yell it from the treetops." His words are light, but Sablepaw can feel his gaze on the pair of them; Silverpaw's fur is not exactly bristling, but it's not smooth and settled. _Maybe she's jealous?_ _Maybe she wants to go too,_ she thinks.

The thought remains with her for the rest of the day, and she tries not to bring up the Gathering around her sister. She nowhere to be found when the Gathering party assembles in the middle of camp, and they set off without further ado. Strongpaw trots alongside her, a jaunty bounce to his step. Of all the company she could be keeping, she wouldn't rush to pick him. However, the animosity between them has dulled a little, as of late, and Sablepaw can't find it in herself to hate him. He's as annoying as ever, of course, but he seems to think they're friends. She's even relieved he's experienced all the chaos of a Gathering before; she won't feel quite to helpless if she's by his side. Crowds have always unnerved her, strangers even more so; by all accounts, she is not a reputably friendly cat.

"Do you think Oakstar's sick?" Sablepaw asks, hoping to quell the peppiness of his step. His abundance of energy always exhausts her. Strongpaw pauses, considering this.

"I think he's sick," he replies at last, "just not in a way anyone can see. Or help." His blue eyes are pensive; chatter blooms around them anyway, impervious the to gravity of their conversation. Sablepaw is struck by the perception of his words. "He must be functional, though. Morningstorm would be far happier if he weren't."

Sablepaw doesn't doubt this; Strongpaw makes these comments often enough that she's started to agree with them, or perhaps she fails to see a side of Morningstorm that _would_ be upset, that would grieve instead of celebrate. This is a version of the deputy that she's yet to witness, but that in itself is not an incriminatory act. There's something calculative about the golden she-cat, like a great golden eagle that observes everything for the slightest hint of a weakness or fault. _No_ , Sablepaw thinks suddenly _, she is more like a spider, with Oakstar caught in her web._ In the end, she supposes, Morningstorm would fit in with whatever insipid allegory thrown at her. She could call her a hundred names, and be sure that each and every one would come back to bite her at some unrelated date. Even now, at the head of the ShadowClan pack, her ears twitch and her tail shivers in some restless wary rhythm. _Ready_ is an apt description, although the apprentice is not sure why, or for what.

"Do the other Clans like us much?" she asks, recalling the blustering tales from her kithood. She knew for a fact her peers considered ThunderClan as a sort of rival sibling, RiverClan as a cultish order of fish-eaters, and WindClan as their spineless cousins. She never paused to consider how the other Clans might view them, holding, as all do, a stubbornly biased and narrow-minded opinion that hers was the very best. Sablepaw doesn't fail to notice Strongpaw's subtle wince.

"Well…" he begins, glancing at the senior members of the group, "we get along. Mostly."

"Yeah," she replies, rolling her eyes. "But do they _like_ us?" She's not sure why it matters, but it seems of paramount importance at this instant; she's about to walk into the midst of all of them, and she'd like to know they hate her or not.

"It's more a sort of...toleration. But the other apprentices are nice," he adds, backtracking to accommodate the displeased expression on her face. "I met some nice ThunderClan she-cats last time and _wow_ , you should have seen Smokepaw with one of them, they got on like a complete forest fire, if you know what I mean."

"I'm not here to gossip," she responds tartly, only because she holds herself up to some high moral pinnacle. Now it's Strongpaw's turn to roll his eyes.

"Gatherings are all _about_ gossip, sweetheart," he drawls, winking as Honeyleap throws them a disgruntled glance. "We'll see if you have any fun with your rigid anti-gossip stance."

Sablepaw sidles a step or two away from him. It's at times like these his supposed charm and humour get to her nerves; normally she'd let someone like Silverpaw or Rainpaw take care of him while she scurried away into the forest, fuming at the audacity of his latest statement. "I don't do things for fun," she mutters, but she knows this is a lie. She can be _very_ fun, provided Strongpaw's not around to bother her.

They walk in silence for the rest of the journey which is, admittedly, not very long. The scent of foreign cats grows thick in the air and pushes Sablepaw, unconsciously, closer to Strongpaw's side. She would rather shadow her own mother, but she's chatting animatedly with Toadstep and Stripethorn, in a somewhat unusual convention; Sablepaw's never really seen her own mother talk to toms, and suspects this has something to do with her father's delicate constitution and jealous tendencies. He's not a barbarian, but nor is he the sharing type. As such, Sablepaw really has no one else to turn to, unless she'd rather brave the hoards alone. Strongpaw must sense her unease, because he throws her a look that is neither smug or suggestive.

"No one's gonna murder us," he says, with a self-assured flick of his tail. He adds an imperious tilt to his head and adds, "The she-cats would riot."

"Get over yourself," she snorts; that's how she arrives, rolling her eyes and sneering ever so slightly, to her first Gathering. The crowd in front of her seems immense, a smear of colour and sound. Imperceptibly, Strongpaw's tail brushes her shoulder. Up ahead, Morningstorm gives the signal and the group splinters, heading out in all directions. Sablepaw sees her mother stop by a group of wiry she-cats, whilst Morningstorm herself heads straight for the three leaders with a rigid set to her shoulders. Sablepaw wonders if she's going to bring up Palefur's murder before the Gathering even starts. In the meantime, the rest of ShadowClan has spread out so far she can no longer tell them apart from the rabble.

"Follow me," Strongpaw announces, setting off at a steady trot into the clearing. Sablepaw dives after him, reluctant to lose him in this sea of unfamiliarity. He heads directly towards a conglomeration of younger cats, clearly the apprentices of the gathered Clans. Strongpaw prances towards them, a jaunty kink to his tail; she's not fooled by the illusion, not when she can spot at least three leaves caught up in the unholy fluff of his backside.

"Ladies," Strongpaw says as the reach the group, smoothly dipping his head into some flattering approximation of a bow. "And gentlemen," he adds, with a sweeping glance at his fellow toms. "I'm delighted to introduce to you my _dear_ friend Sablepaw." He steps back, gracefully, and pushes Sablepaw into the ring of socialisation, not wholly unkind. She thinks he winks at her as she goes by, and she's not wrong.

"Sablepaw," one of the she-cat says, assuming an expression of thoughtful concentration. "Oh, yes! Silverpaw's sister. I'm Honeypaw, and these are Whitepaw, Mousepaw, Frostpaw, Lilypaw and Eaglepaw." She finishes her rapidfire introduction and sits back, looking simultaneously pleased and expectant.

Sablepaw's head spins with each new name, and though she smiles, it must look wooden and strange.

Strongpaw looks at her, his fur barely brushing hers, but it's one of the young strangers who sees her floundering and rescues her.

"First Gathering, huh?" It's the golden tom, the one with the burnished, autumnal pelt. "The first time seeing so many cats in one place in startling." Eaglepaw, she thinks; he smells of forest and ferns, the prevailing scents of ThunderClan's territory. He gives her a beckoning, lulling smile, and Sablepaw sits beside him without a second thought, knowing Strongpaw will gladly make himself comfortable beside whichever she-cat he decides to pester. Moments later, of course, he wedges himself in beside Sablepaw and Whitepaw, settling in with a self-satisfied _hmph_ of approval.

"Yes," Sablepaw says, simply, still flustered. She's always been comfortable within her small circle of friends, the cats she grew up with, but here she feels the embodiment of being a fish out of water. Luckily enough, at that precise moment the collective attention of the thrall turns to the center of the Gathering, and the esteemed leaders at its center. It is not so strange seeing Morningstorm up there, in midst of them, sleek and stone-faced with rigid shoulders and ruthless posture.

"Where's your real leader?" Eaglepaw asks, watching as the four clear their throats. "He was here last time, I'm sure."

"He's unwell," Sablepaw replies, unsure if she's making some sort of tactical error here. Surely that kind of information is sensitive, even dangerous, but it doesn't seem like anything a smart cat can't figure out on their own. She seems to be tripping over her paws tonight, as if she's discovered she has six instead of four. She never knew she could be this unwieldy in a public setting.

Eaglepaw murmurs something sympathetically. She thinks, cursing her uncertainty, that she hasn't transgressed on any tradition at all.

Strongpaw huffs out a sigh beside her, sounding irate, though he keeps talking to she-cat on his right. It sounds inane, boring even. Strongpaw, she knows, is hardly one for boredom.

The first leader to speak is a black tom. "RiverClan is doing well. We've had three litters born this moon, and have more than enough prey to support our blossoming ranks." He seems a little smug, as though these litters have been a personal project for him, something he's overseen with meticulous attention to detail.

"Crowstar is as arrogant as they come," someone murmurs in her ear; she thinks it's Eaglepaw, until the commentator adds a slide aside about Morningstorm. "Which is quite the feat, knowing my mother." His breath fans across her whiskers, smelling of the vole he ate for lunch.

"We've smelt fox lingering around the edges of our borders, but it hasn't dared cross. That's our news for tonight, and I'm sure our prosperity will only grow in the coming moons."

Sablepaw watches Morningstorm's face, straining to see every ounce of expression. She seems remarkably impassive.

"Thank you, Crowstar," the grey she-cat says, stepping deftly in front of him. Eaglepaw tells her, proudly, that this is Fernstar. He's a ThunderClan tom, she realizes, though she tries not to let this fact diminish his likability.

"ThunderClan is progressing adequately," she says, making no attempts to outshine the imperious tone of Crowstar's speech. "We've also smelt fox, but have seen neither hair nor hide of the creature. We are ready, though, to defend our territory from any threat. We have one new apprentice, Fleetpaw, although he was unable to attend tonight. On a more important note, our long-serving deputy Breezespot has retired, and Willowmist has stepped up to take his place."

Fernstar dips her head, amid the polite murmurings of the crowd, and steps back. She seems brusque, candid, and Sablepaw likes her. ThunderClan, she thinks, doesn't sound half-bad. This thought is a private one, a dark one, and she will never let it see the light of day. She fluffs her fur up instead, starting to overheat in the ragtag circle of apprentices.

WindClan goes next, speaking dryly of prey and plains and omens. Splashstar, she infers, is not overtly popular amongst the other Clans.

" _The river will run red_ ," Eaglepaw quotes under his breath, sardonically; Whitepaw giggles and Sablepaw, despite herself, smiles in return. " _And mice will fly, and we'll all drown in a summer rainstorm._ Does she hear herself? Where does she come up with this shit?"

" _Language_!" Strongpaw gasps, pretending to cover Sablepaw's ears with his voluminous tail, sweeping leaves into her eyes with his efforts. _I'm older than you_ , she thinks, contemptuously, but doesn't bother to speak the words. She's not so insecure that she feels the need to repeat this fact every other day.

"Last Gathering," Lilypaw says, a salacious undertone in her voice, "she predicted a change in the Warrior Code. She all but demanded we do it. She's crazy."

Sablepaw ignores their gossip, in favour of scrutinising Morningstorm. She has stepped up, as though displayed on a pedestal, and looks every inch a regal leader. More so than the three standing behind her, suddenly diminutive in her presence. _This_ looks like an omen. Perhaps it is.

"ShadowClan has done well in the face of adversity, as it always does." She begins strongly, no quaver in her voice, no tremble in her legs. _Strongpaw must be proud_ , she thinks, knowing that he's not. "Three weeks past, one of our own- our dear, beloved elder Palefur- was murdered mere minutes from our camp. _Brutalised_. The shocking discovery was made by our own apprentices."

Sablepaw feels a sudden weight on her pelt- the collective gaze of the gathered Clans, scrutinising her for any sign of trauma or agitation. She hopes they find none, but that's as improbable as finding Palefur's long gone murderer.

"Unsurprisingly, her attacker fled the scene."

Sablepaw is almost relieved; she'd been apprehensive about this, wondering what accusations would spill from her lips. She's handled this better than Oakstar would, but Sablepaw is no longer sure he's capable of speaking, let alone rattling off a news bulletin at a public assembly.

"But we don't need to catch her killer to know who's guilty."

The crowd stills, a disturbed silence falling softly over the ranks.

Morningstorm turns, a flash of molten gold, avenging and vainglorious. She points herself at Crowstar; her claws, Sablepaw notes, are unsheathed.

"You," she snarls: it's all but a roar, and the sound is too loud in the silent clearing. "Filthy murderers! RiverClan has always lusted after the glory and wealth of ShadowClan, but now you send _assassins_ to sate your thirst? Who's next? _What's_ next?" The crowd is bristling, and even the other leaders look alarmed. Crowstar bares his teeth in a snarl.

"We have no quarrel with ShadowClan," he says, impressively calm. "Yet. If you continue to implicate us in crimes we did not commit, this soon will change."

"Liar," she spits, but the sound is indistinct, a muffled hum of a word. She looks ready to skin Crowstar alive.

"That's enough!" Fernstar barks, looking up at the cloudless sky. "This Gathering is dismissed! Good night!" She leaps from the stone, shoving Crowstar with her shoulder, sending him down too. He seems all too happy to disappear into the crowd, and the RiverClan warriors begin to leave, slipping away in silent streams. Whitepaw, too, stands to leave in haste, though she pauses and shakes as if to rid herself of ShadowClan's scent. The glare she sends back to Sablepaw and Strongpaw is injured.

Strongpaw nudges her with his shoulder, an unimpressed frown on his face. "We should go too," he mutters, and she couldn't agree more. She looks back at the other apprentices, who look frankly traumatised, and dips her head in a wordless farewell. It's all she can manage. In hindsight, she knows, she should've stayed, should've defended herself and her Clan- though not the deputy, and her barrage of accusations. _Never her_.

She follows Strongpaw from the clearing, stepping where he steps, as though they walk in a stiff wind- one stern gust ought to be all it would take to bowl her over, send her falling down.

She looks back, preserving the scene, and sees Splashstar. She stands on the speaking stone, staring at the sky: she is, indeed, some sort of oracle, a priestly vision. Sablepaw's not sure what kind she is for a long, long time.

* * *

Everything returns to relative normality the next. Word spreads, of course, about Morningstorm and her outburst, though it only garners sympathy for the ShadowClan cause and hatred for RiverClan's. Everyone is sure, in quiet confidence, that they're guilty. It only makes sense. More importantly, Silverpaw seems to forgive her- fusses over her, really, as though her concern can smother the memory of that disastrous first Gathering. As with Palefur, the horror and spectacle of it all fades; within a week, she laughs it off, and returns to normal, though she now knows more about herself, and the fears she didn't know she possessed.

This only drives her to study harder; moves and countermoves; strategy; blood, bone and anatomy. Strength, she decides, is her insecurity, and she patches it up as best she can. She's a passable hunter, and soon her fighting skills surpass her knacks as a huntress. Things are halted, momentarily, when Meadowmist falls pregnant. The very idea boggles Sablepaw's mind. Bramblenose is soon appointed as her new mentor, in an attempt to synchronise her concluding schooling with Sunpaw's; he's either restored himself to Morningstorm's good graces, or is currently making the attempt. _With her_. With her _training_. Sablepaw gets a little pissy at this unappealing concept, and complains to Silverpaw, who in turn gets pissy with her. She should be grateful, apparently, but he's a _kittypet_ , one who's earned the animosity of half the Clan.

She regrets this, of course, and not just because she upset her sister (SIlverpaw is all the best parts of her, something she readily acknowledges). Bramblenose begins to teach her things, and it is not the standard ShadowClan curriculum. He specialises in the _city_ , the distant and shining land of adventure.

Sablepaw learns- of cars and humans, streets and the things that wait in their shadows.

"Why did you leave?" she asks one day, after they conclude their tree-climbing episode. Her claws ache, and she flexes them.

Bramblenose smiles at her; he has a nice face, a handsome one, that Sablepaw has not failed to notice. "I suppose you could say I was bored. The city life was a very lonely one. The life I lived was, at least. There were gangs and groups of thugs, of course, but I, being of a stoically moral nature, refused to join their ranks. They were growing bigger and bigger every day, but I managed to resist."

Sablepaw snorts. _Stoic moral nature_ is not an inappropriate label for him, she thinks, but he picks and chooses moments to let it show. "You were lonely then? What about your family?" She thinks of her own: her doting father, her charming mother, sweet Silverpaw and rowdy Pepperpaw. Her friends, too, are not far from her thoughts. Nettlepaw, Rainpaw, Smokepaw, on occasion. Strongpaw, too, at a stretch. _She keeps a healthy distance from him, and maintains her solid barricade of disdain and attentive insults- it's a habit._

"Family?" Bramblenose asks, wrinkling his nose. He has paused in between strides. "I had a father, but he wanted nothing to do with me, after I refused to help his entrepreneurial enterprise." At her questioning stare, he gives her a flat look. "It's no topic to discuss with your sensitive young ears, either. So I went to the streets, and then to the forest, and then to here. ShadowClan was wonderfully receptive, for the most part."

"What about your mother?" Sablepaw asks. For all of her superficial protests, she loves Embertooth, dearly.

Bramblenose shrugs. "She was a side project, of my father. I never knew her."

They walk in silence back to camp, digging up a small cache of prey on the way. The city has suddenly developed a darker undertone, in her mind. It is not all staying up late, catching your own meals, and reveling in your hard-won freedom, she understands. Perhaps she would not like it so much after all.

Silverpaw ambushes her when they get back to the clearing, full of questions- _Where did you go? What did you see? What did you talk about?_ Sablepaw fills her in, mostly, but keeps Bramblenose's city comments to herself. They seem almost too sad to voice. She play-fights with Pepperpaw, later, ignoring Strongpaw's "helpful" commentary, and manages to pin him.

"Victory!" she crowes, hopping off him and graciously allowing him to shake the dust from his fur. Thornstreak thumps his tail in approval, and Strongpaw pretends to swoon.

Oakstar, meanwhile, remains more of a recluse than ever.

The next morning- solidly over halfway through their apprenticeships, and reaping the benefits- Sablepaw, Nettlepaw, Silverpaw, Sunpaw and Rainpaw venture out into the forest on an ill-advised hunting trip. It will be little more than gossip and hot air, a fact not lost to their mentors. Sablepaw, for once, happily partakes in the exchange of gloriously juicy information. Jaypaw has just become Jayflight and, as the prettiest of all of them, simply _must_ have suitors lined up for days.

"Bramblenose!" Sunpaw exclaims. "It has to be Jayflight and _Bramblenose_!"

Nettlepaw veers away for a few moments and returns, miraculously, with a thrush.

"It makes sense," she mumbles, through downy feathers. "I think he's been distracted recently, and not just with his doubled mentoring duties." She twitches her whiskers to match her conspiratol tone.

"Nonsense," Silverpaw says. "She could have anyone, why Bramblenose?"

"Who'd say no to Bramblenose?" Sunpaw says, chiming in again, evidently pleased with her new theory. "I mean, I would. He's not exactly my type, but my point remains."

" _Your_ type starts in _White_ and ends in _paw_ ," says Sablepaw, who now knows some things.

"You're not exactly bolstering your own argument," Rainpaw snorts. "I'd pass on him, as well. I have my eyes set elsewhere." She trails off, dreamily, and Sunpaw shudders in response.

"Eww. I have _not_ given you my permission to pursue my brother!" she says, a little shrilly, and they all fall into laughter. Rainpaw's mirth dies quickly.

Sablepaw and Silverpaw find themselves walking ahead of the group, brushing shoulders in sisterly harmony.

"And you, Sablepaw? Have you got _your_ eyes on anyone?" Silverpaw doesn't sound like she's teasing, but her sincerity can often be part of her bantering charm.

"No…" Sablepaw says, slowly, but she sounds uncertain.

"Because _I_ heard you were sitting pretty close to a handsome ThunderClan tom," she says, voice light and bubbly. She doesn't sound castigating in the least.

"Who told you that?" Sablepaw exclaims, scandalized; the she-cats behind them fall into laughter again. "Was it Strongpaw? God, it was Strongpaw!"

"That boy cannot keep his mouth shut," Silverpaw says, though her voice is fond. "He's a worse gossiper than all of us combined."

"But it _is_ a nice mouth," Rainpaw says, conversationally, sending the group into a fit of squeals. Silverpaw seems to be nodding in agreement.

Then they find the smell, or the smell finds them, and it seems to happen all over again.

* * *

"You didn't follow it this time, did you?" Morningstorm asks, stern in every aspect of her countenance. She has a voice simply made for interrogation. "And you didn't find anything?" She has insisted on talking to all witnesses on-one-on, and gave them no time to corroborate their stories.

"We were walking, and talking, for a few minutes," Sablepaw says. "We noticed the scent close to the border. It was thick, and foreign, and we couldn't figure out what it was."

Morningstorm nods her head. Sablepaw must be saying the right things; she feels relieved.

"As soon as we realized we could smell something, we stopped. We couldn't see any pawprints, or blood. We got nervous, turned around, and came home."

"You did the right thing," Morningstorm says, almost soothingly. "The last thing this Clan needs is a pile of slaughtered apprentices." That sentiment is instantly destroyed.

"We thought," Sablepaw says, attempting to venture out on a limb, "that it might be the fox. The one the other Clans mentioned…. at the Gathering." She winces as the dreaded word passes her lips. Morningstorm is liable to explode, for all she knows.

The older she-cat's lips seem to twist, in some kind of smirk or growl. "It's nothing for you to ponder," she says, simply. "We do have warriors for that. You may leave me now, and return to your apprentice duties in the morning. It would be prudent for you to remain with your mentor at all times, and to watch out in turn for young Streampaw and Pinepaw."

"Yessir," Sablepaw says, all too happy to escape the deputy's overwhelming presence.

Strongpaw is waiting outside the medicine den. He must be there for his mother, she supposes, and is surprised when he peels away from the lengthening evening shadows to join her.

"Are you okay?" he asks. "Silverpaw told me everything, and it reminded me of that afternoon, when we found… you know."

All their words seem inadequate tonight.

But she does know. She's remembering too.

"I'm okay," she replies, in her best attempt at a convincing tone. "Rattled, of course, but we didn't see anything this time."

Strongpaw leans against her for a brief second, and she revels in the warmth and comfort, before she remembers herself.

"As soon as we're warriors," he says, more to himself than her. "As soon as we're warriors, I'm going to hunt that thing down."

"Bring me back its head," she says, surprising herself with the fierceness of her demand.

He just bows slightly, mock-chivalrous. "Anything for you, my love." He's a brash thing, wild, reckless, hungry, but she believes him. Just a little.

* * *

 _She drowns in a sea, dies in a circle. Gasps for breath in a ring of faces. Her bones crumble, her skin melts, and they watch it all, this pantomime of justice. She cannot smile, cannot force a laugh or apology or plea. The apathy of it all is crushing, crushing her, suffocating. She cries and wheezes, but none will help her. And so she drowns, drowns in that cruel circle of faces…_

That is the night of the nightmares, and its reign is long, its grip unyielding. It dies with the dawn and is born again that very same evening. Death and birth are soon a steady revolution in her life.

* * *

In the wake of the dreams- in which she is invariably, beaten, broken, killed- she loses a little weight, a little luster. It's not abnormal; half the Clan goes through the same thing, the same sensation of being haunted. She sticks religiously to the constants in her life.

Her constant, of course, is this: watching Strongpaw and Silverpaw, laughing at them, smiling with them. It's nearly enough to banish the memories of her unwaking, undying moments, and that in itself is a blessed thing.

Two more Gatherings go by, and Sablepaw chooses not to attend. She gets all the gossip from Strongpaw anyway, who makes a point to inform her how _well-groomed_ Eaglepaw is, and which way his sleek _fur_ chooses to fall. She pretends to lap all this up, rolling her eyes the whole time.

"But his _eyes_!" she cries. "What shade of blue are they? How did they glow in the moonlight?"

It's somehow easy to be this jovial, as though all this angst has given her a new, witty edge.

Strongpaw just rolls his eyes in return and composes an ode to Eaglepaw's empyrean eyes. It's sickening, and it pleases both of them.

When the dawn patrol she's joined bumps into ThunderClan's at the border, she looks everywhere but Eaglepaw's eyes. Bramblenose and the ThunderClan warriors talk about prey, and the upcoming winter, and the suspicious nature of those seedy RiverClan cats. Smokepaw, too, seems awfully chatty with Lilypaw.

"Will you be at the next Gathering?" Eaglepaw asks, kindly ignoring her avoidance of direct eye-contact. "I haven't seen you there for a while, and I'm sure we'll both have our warrior names by then."

She pauses and considers the thought. The idea of her warrior name has been her armour, and concept of walking into a Gathering _wearing_ it seems doable. "Probably," she says, with a smile that may seem a little too coy. The prospect of warriordom never fails to rile her up.

"Well," Eaglepaw says, as his older peers make their farewells and begin to depart. "Let's call it a date."

Sablepaw almost chokes on a glob of spit, and when she recovers, he's gone.

* * *

She dreams she is not the hunted, but the hunter. She does not flee, but chases. She is something to fear.

* * *

The twilight of her apprenticeship, as mentioned graciously by Eaglepaw, has arrived. Bramblenose has mostly taught her all he knows- Meadowmist, meanwhile, has kitted an enormous batch of lumpy new babies in the nursery. Sablepaw visits once, and that's enough for her.

Oakstar has barely been seen in camp for months, and so Sablepaw makes her peace with the prospect of Morningstorm bestowing upon her her new name. There's a chance it might be badass, after all, even if there's _also_ a chance it might be insipid, uninspired. She thinks it might happen any day now; their ceremony seems practically overdue. In the long tenure of her apprenticeship, she's seen Strongpaw, Sunpaw, Pinepaw and Streampaw become apprentices. Palefur has died. Jayflight has already moved on from them, leaving Smokepaw and Pepperpaw ing in her wake.

Sablepaw feels like she's on the cusp of something. A new dawn. An old storm. A beginning, and an end.

She wakes up on a morning in which nothing changes. Nothing _happens_. It is superficially normal, just as she likes it. She spars with Pepperpaw again (and loses, but it's fine), eats her morning meal with her mother, lies in the sun with her sister. She doesn't think of her dreams, or what may be lurking in the forest, or _who_. Even the sight of Morningstorm stalking across the clearing doesn't dampen her mood.

She remains positive, or tries to, when the deputy looks her way and calls her name.

"Sablepaw!" the golden queen snaps, looking uncharacteristically flustered. The emotion doesn't sit well on her stern face. Gulping, Sablepaw climbs to her paws and slinks towards her, attempting to look vague and non-threatening.

"Yes?" she asks, wondering if she's done something wrong, if her warrior ceremony has been delayed for a purpose.

"You're needed," the deputy replies, face pinched. "My son has run off. Someone needs to talk to him. Someone he likes."

"Oh, no," Sablepaw starts to say- Strongpaw doesn't like her, they merely reserve some kind of mutual toleration for each other, for the sake of Silverpaw- but Morningstorm interrupts her refusal.

"He cannot be out there alone," she continues. "You have to go after him, talk sense into him."

"Um," Sablepaw says, not quite agreeing.

"He does not agree with me," Morningstorm says, darkly, her eyes no longer on Sablepaw's. "Refuses my presence, even. He ought to be by that fallen log, the hollow one close to camp. It's where I found him last time. Bring him back to me."

Nodding, Sablepaw can only do as she bids. It must be safe enough, if she's delegating one lone apprentice to the task, but she is still unnerved. She starts off into the forest, giving her family a one-word farewell. The paths are familiar to her, after months of walking them, but they seem different in her solitude. She has not been truly alone for a long time. It seems to her that Strongpaw must like this sensation. She can't agree.

Shivering, she hurries on to the hollow tree. She knows the one; it's been branded off-limits to the apprentices, declared forbidden territory. It's strange now, that Strongpaw's chosen it for his haunt.

She doesn't know him as well as she ought, but that has always suited her just fine.

"Strongpaw?" she calls, striding into the clearing. The loneliness is enough to raise her hackles: the sensation of a thousand eyes burns on her skin. Sablepaw scans the clearing, but she can't see him, or anyone else for that matter. Perhaps Morningstorm has sent her on an erroneous mission to test the bounds of her gullibility. They must be fathomless, she's sure. "Strongpaw!" The edge in her voice is sharp. _I sound like I_ need _him_ , she thinks. _Like I want him_.

Stepping closer to the log, she sees claw marks in its worn bark. Angry scratches, lines of rage and pain. There's a story here, one no one has bothered to tell her.

She tries again, softer- too soft. His name barely leaves her mouth.

"No, Silverpaw." There he is, though he sounds _wrong_. "Not this time. Not today."

The sound of his voice and the asperity of his words unnerve her. Sablepaw feels as though she's transgressed on something, stepped across a line, into a scene that does not want her. She wants to recoil, but she restrains herself; there are worse things than the imagines her mind has supplied her.

She looks into the shadows and sees him. For once, for the first time, she sees him, and he does not see her.

His head is bent, his face obscured. The hunch of his shoulders is uncomfortable, intimate. There are burrs caught up in the sleek length of his fur, and a spot of dried blood stains his nose. He seems like a real thing, in this moment, something to touch, and be touched by.

"Well," Sablepaw says, as though she's brave, willfully ignoring the rasp of her voice. "It's not Silverpaw." She almost phrases it as a question. Instead, it comes out much harsher, not apologetic in the least.

 _Why does she come here, with him? Why would they need a secret spot, all to themselves? What does she have to do, or say, that she can't tell me about?_

He looks up at this. His eyes are not the same- not gentle, not conniving, not lit with laughter. They seem to banish her from the clearing, to exile her, with the force of his gaze.

"Lover's spat?" she asks, _tsk_ ing. God. She can't stop.

"Sablepaw," he drawls, sitting upright in one smooth move. "Well. We can't all be loveless hermits, you know."

Is he joking? Is she?

"Your mother is looking for you," she replies. "She seems _concerned_." Her words are concentrated, venomous, and she isn't trying at all.

"And so she sent you?" He's laughing,a sound to match the slow cold boil of her blood. "I can see how much she cares, sparing one of her henchmen, and all."

"Aren't you lucky," she sneers. A sudden silence expands between them, like the air chilling in the wake of nightfall. He walks closer, soundless on a bed of pine needles.

"Shall we count the ways?" he asks. "I'd begin, but I can't _think_ of anything." He stops before her, and she notices, in the midst of her anger, that he is now taller than her.

"Precious prince," she snarls. "Your nose is too big to see everyone falling over themselves at your feet." She glares at his muzzle, not his eyes. They are snowmelt blue. They glitter with an icy sheen in the sunlight. Anywhere but his eyes.

Strongpaw tilts his head. "Okay, then," he starts, gesturing grandly with a paw. "Fall."

"Oh, so you'll _allow_ it?" she snaps, but she backs up a step. And then another. "Your majesty, I'm privileged!"

He starts to say something- "Fine! God! Fine, just stop!"- but her paws do not stop moving.

She starts to run. If the hidden murderer of the forest lays its paws on Strongpaw then, well. It might be a nice change of pace.

* * *

i didn't want to leave it here, and if i didn't have so much goddamned course work to do i wouldn't.

ANYWAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY URIEKUKI I LOVE YOU


	3. the war never waged (part 1)

guess THE FUCK WHAT

this is IN FACT not a three-shot due to my crippling inability to harness my creativity while working towards a deadline and not write A Monstress of a chapter

and YES perhaps I DID project just a little too much of myself onto sablepaw but whatever

finally... yes. congratulations to my wife. she has become old. happy birthday my love.

* * *

The path leads her back to Silverpaw. It almost always does.

She skids back into camp, probably looking wild; everything around her seems so utterly normal that she feels displaced, ripped from the seams of one world and ungraciously shoved into the next. Apprentices tumble by their den, and the elders sit contentedly in the sun. Silverpaw is where she left her, elegantly reclined in the sunshine, familiar and comfortable. _But she is not_. Her sister is suddenly enigmatic, some new figure of hidden intrigue.

Sablepaw still wants to fight.

She marches up to Silverpaw, who merely watches her trajectory with warm green eyes.

"About Strongpaw-" she begins, perhaps a little too forceful, too eager.

"Oh, yes!" Silverpaw interrupts, looking pleased. "You know, I'm so glad you two are finally getting along. It means a lot to me."

"...It does?" Sablepaw asks, abruptly deflated. This is the Silverpaw she knows- soft and caring, mild and knowing. _No Silverpaw, not this time_. Whoever Strongpaw was addressing, it was not her sister. Not the one that sits in front of her.

"You've finally given him a chance," she continues. "He'll be a good friend to you. Just return the favour." There's a warning in her eyes, both a joke and a caution that has come too late.

"What's his issue with Morningstorm?" Sablepaw asks, instead of the hundred questions burning in her throat. Silverpaw looks uncomfortable, uncertain, and Sablepaw no longer feels out of place.

"I'm not sure if you've noticed, Sablepaw," she begins, simultaneously inciting her curiosity and insulting her observation skills, "but they're nothing alike. Morningstorm is a climber, and she's only here to reach the top of the ladder. Strongpaw's just a normal tom; he wants to have fun, hang out with his friends, and get his warrior name some time soon. That's all he wants out of life."

 _He does not agree with me._

What could they be arguing about? Morningstorm has been deputy for a long time; it would be strange for Strongpaw to suddenly disagree with her position, her status. Perhaps she is all too keen for Oakstar to die, subsumed by his broken heart. Perhaps Strongpaw thinks he can yet survive.

"Sure," Sablepaw says, shrugging. "Morningstorm is mad at him again. I just wanted to know why."

Silverpaw smirks and rolls onto her side, chasing a patch of sunlight. "Look at you, dear sister. _Gossiping_. I didn't know you had it in you."

Sablepaw looks away and catches the eye of Sunpaw as she escapes the grasp of her mother. Relieved, the little golden she-cat darts over.

"I don't gossip," Sablepaw says, in retaliation. "I gather information. I observe."

Although, she reflects, her skills seem to be slipping.

Arriving like a tempest blown off-course, Sunpaw storms up to the pair and throws herself on the ground. "I don't have a mother," she announces. "I have an overlord."

In the distance, Morningstorm glowers and retreats to Toadstep's side. Her brother sits with his mate, whose welcome - obvious even at this distance - is a little lacklustre.

"Not you too," says Silverpaw, empathetic. "What's wrong?"

Sunpaw barks out a laugh, but she's not amused. Her eyes are deep and black, a dark shade of vengeful. "She's trying to arrange a _suitor_ for me. She's not going to let me pick a mate. She's selling me off for a bit of status and connection."

The sisters blanch. "That's _medieval_ ," Sablepaw says, feeling a pressing need to speak without really knowing what to say.

"I'm trying to refuse, but she knows I don't like toms. Mother can't trust me to _find a suitable mate_."

"Who's she going to pass you off to?" Silverpaw asks, sending a suspicious look around the camp. No one seems particularly deserving of her scrutiny. Morningstorm, haughty and imperial, is the only culprit they can spot.

"She didn't say, but I'm hedging my guesses. I think it's Stripethorn. He's a powerful senior warrior without a mate. Mother wants strong allies when she becomes leader."

"Besides, he's Oakstar's son," her sister adds. "The whole Clan trusts him."

"Status and power," Sunpaw sighs. "That's all I'm worth."

Silverpaw hushes her and moves closer, huddling against her, but Sablepaw's been distracted. Strongpaw is stalking into camp. Leaves are swept into his fur, and dirt cakes his paws, but that doesn't nothing to diminish the image of him: stoic, sharp, irate. Sablepaw wants to press herself into the ground, to melt into the shadows: simultaneously, she thinks about marching up to him, staring right into his glowering eyes, perhaps slapping him around the head for good measure. But it seems less and less like a good idea the more she envisions it.

She doesn't need to slap him around the head, or even move at all; Strongpaw begins to scan the clearing, and his gaze lands on her before she can even blink. Something seems to snap into place.

Morningstorm's voice reverberates around the whole clearing. It has a tenor in it, a note of command.

"Strongpaw!" That single word is full of ire. Even Sablepaw, far removed from the situation, feels the urge to wince.

Strongpaw doesn't move an inch, even as his mother strides towards him, a sneer fixed on her pretty face. It's as much emotion as Sablepaw's ever seen from the deputy.

"How dare you disobey me," she hisses. The whole Clan is listening by now, entranced. "You will do as I say. I am your mother."

And then, while everyone stares and wonders, Morningstorm snaps up her son by the scruff of his neck and drags him away, into the shadows. Strongpaw suddenly looks like a puppet: empty, small, limp. Morningstorm is tall, powerfully built, and he looks like a mere scrap of fur in comparison.

The three she-cats watch the scene in complete silence. It's a compulsive sort of quiet, stifling. It swallows her words, and even her breath can't quite seem to make it from her throat.

"I wonder what the deputy of ShadowClan won't say in front of her people," Silverpaw says darkly. "Can't be anything nice."

From the edge of the clearing, Smokepaw and Pepperpaw wander over; their languid pace is at dramatic odds with their taut expressions and their shoulders, held stiff in the air.

"Poor kid," Pepperpaw says, though he's only a couple of moons older. "Guess it doesn't pay to have a deputy for a mother." Absentmindedly, he presses a lick to Sablepaw's ear. The gesture is soothing.

Smokepaw just grunts and sits down. The entire group is staring at the spot Morningstorm disappeared, as though the darkness holds any clues.

"Disobey how?" Sablepaw asks, looking to Sunpaw. But she already knows. Morningstorm seems hellbent on alliance and power, and she'll tie herself to it with blood.

She begins to wonder who.

* * *

Strongpaw never brings up that humiliating confrontation again. He slinks into his nest, late that night, and curls up without a word. Sablepaw brims with thoughts, of all the apologies and placations she ought to make, but can't bring herself to give them a voice. Not in front of the others, who might behold her regret and mistake it for weakness. See vulnerability within her guilt. She won't let them witness that.

She stays silent from her spot beside Nettlepaw and watches him. His eyes are screwed tightly shut, but his breaths come shallow, barely stirring the long, errant hair on his flank. One paw twitches reflexively, fraying the moss beneath him. Sablepaw can't say whether he sleeps or not, but she falls asleep like this: watching him and wondering, hating that sad stirring of pity and guilt in her stomach.

They leave that day behind them, but Sablepaw feels it each time she sees him, remembers it every time their eyes meet. It becomes harder and harder to form her apology, until the words just feel like lumps in her mouth, and useless white noise in her head.

Silverpaw doesn't seem to notice the fragmentation between them; she leaves the camp more and more, spends bouts of time in the forest. She must be with Strongpaw (they have a spot, after all, one they hide from friends and family alike) but she never mentions this to her sister, when she's around. At least she seems happy. That really seems to be all Sablepaw can ask for.

The next half-moon passes by in fits of uneasiness. The whole batch of older apprentices - Sablepaw and siblings, her friends, even Strongpaw and Sunpaw - are submitted to their assessments. The group is almost sick with anticipation, though Sablepaw begins to wonder: what will really change, once they're warriors? They won't have mentors, but they'll bow to the next tier of authority. They can do what they want, but she already could before.

There's still the threat in the forest. There are awkward relations with the other Clans and a deputy she can't quite trust. How will a shiny new name fix any of that?

Sablepaw, now, seems to be the only cynic. If the others have fears, they don't share them. If they worry about the day after tomorrow, she can't tell.

In her hunting assignment, Sablepaw catches two birds and a squirrel. Bramblenose seems proud, even when Rainpaw brings in a raven, a frog, and a fish, and Strongpaw deposits a rabbit in camp that's almost as big as he is, a feat made even more impressive by the fact that rabbits hardly ever venture into the marshand pine forests of ShadowClan's territory. Later she takes the squirrel to the nursery, where Meadowmist's kits squeal and leap on the dead thing with fervour, still young and round and clumsy. There are five of them, but her head spins with just the thought of dealing with one.

She thinks about congratulating Strongpaw on doing well. She thinks very hard. She doesn't, in the end.

The cosmic puppeteers of the universe make her regret this, of course, when they're paired together for their final exam. It's fighting. Of course she should have buttered him up, softened him a little, made sure he didn't _really_ want to kick her ass in the arena. Icecloud announces their names in tandem, and with a small shiver of inexplicable dread, they turn to look at each other. There's a challenge in her eyes, but she can't be sure what she reads in his.

They haven't fought in a while - physically, at least. Verbal sparring is an almost daily occurrence, but it's been a little more barbed, more hostile of late. Sablepaw's no longer sure where they stand, when they go toe to toe.

"No claws," Bramblenose says sternly, ushering them into the little gladiatorial arena. "Fight fairly. The first apprentice to force their opponent into an ordinarily fatal position will be the winner."

They face off for one long, blank moment. Sablepaw can feel everyone's gaze on her fur, uncomfortably.

With a little smirk, she says, "Good luck." She manages to sound far more confident than she feels. What a fallacy.

"I'll let you forfeit now," Strongpaw says, airily. "I don't want to mess up your pretty face."

"It's not a battle of words, kids," says Bramblenose. "Start beating each other up."

The mentors sit in a little pack, perched on a veritable cloud of judgement, with the apprentices on their right. They all wait for the spectacle to unfold. The sensation of their expectation is hot under her skin, corrosive in her veins. Sablepaw backs up a little, in preparation. A quick, clean battle. That's all they need.

Sablepaw scrutinises Strongpaw, keeps her limbs loose. He'll expect her to make the first move, so she won't. To win, she needs to throw him off his game.

After a moment, Strongpaw makes up his mind, and dashes for her. Sablepaw spins away and kicks at him as he passes, catching him on the ear. It's a city move, passed down from Bramblenose and his infinite urban wisdom. Strongpaw staggers away a step, shaking his head, but Sablepaw is already charging him. She tackles and pins him, aiming her teeth for his spine.

But victory is far from assured.

Strongpaw rears beneath her, tipping them both over backward. The breath is crushed from her lungs as they land, and for a moment, ringed by the blackened edges of her vision, all she sees is his face. There's a vindication in his eyes. There's guilt in them, too.

Sablepaw moves herself into action, feeling the rapid-fire beat of her heart, volatile as a collapsing star. She rakes her hindlegs down his belly and bites his paw, from where it stands beside her head. And, as her heart shakes her chest and pulses against her bones, she unbalances Strongpaw and rolls atop him.

The eyes are heavy, and waiting.

Strongpaw lands a blow against her head, and she backs away. There is no force in the stroke, no real malice or intent. She's confused for the barest beat of a moment.

 _He wants to trick me. Unsettle me, topple me over to win._

Sablepaw bares her teeth. He wants to play like that? Bluffs and trickey?

She rises up above the other apprentice and boxes his head, and springs back when he aims for her belly.

"I almost felt that one," she snaps, landing solidly on four feet. They circle each other for a moment, feeling the stalemate hanging in the air. Strongpaw feints and darts right, and Sablepaw shoves out a leg to trip him, though he does little more than stumble over her attempt. He recovers quickly and slams into her flank, and they both go sprawling.

With claws barely hidden, Sablepaw finds the pulse of a vein in his throat. Strongpaw's jaws wrap around hers. The threat of a draw hangs over them both.

Sablepaw feels the thrum of blood in her veins, where Strongpaw's teeth rest imperceptibly on her skin. There's a barren silence for a moment.

"Well done, apprentices," Icecloud says, and the other apprentices break into cheers and noises of general jubilation (they've already passed, and nothing can dampen their collective mood).

"Looks like a tie," Bramblenose adds. "Congratulations."

Strongpaw relinquishes his grip, and Sablepaw sits up with abrupt hastiness. She smooths her fur as calmly as she can, then risks a glance at him.

"You did… well," Strongpaw says, clearing his throat. He has sand in his fur, and a smudge of dust above his eye. The way he looks at her triggers a thought.

"You threw it," Sablepaw hisses, too low for the others to hear. "You threw the damn fight. You should've won but you didn't."

"I think you're overestimating my abilities," he replies, smooth as anything. He gives her a measured look, a non-verbal _shut up_.

She can only shake her head. "You didn't want me to lose and you didn't want me to win, either."

"I'm a complicated and mysterious being," Strongpaw says, though she's not amused. He grimaces, as though wondering just how stubborn she can be, just how unwilling to accept his 'good grace' or 'mercy'. "I know you don't like crowds. Figured I'd better not beat you to a pulp while you were otherwise preoccupied."

The other cats reach them then, offering up congratulations and praise. Sablepaw stares at Strongpaw for a moment longer. _Don't do that again,_ she mouths, then looks away to refocus on her sister and her friends. Pepperpaw is mimicking that backward city spin, looking comical, until Smokepaw trips him with a lazy paw and pushes him into the dirt. Sablepaw laughs along with everyone else, but there's a feeling in the pit of her stomach, an antagonistic mix of anger and unworthiness. It brews there for the rest of the day. Strongpaw must sense it, but she ignores him. It's much easier than ignoring what she feels.

* * *

The apprentices are told, without any shadow of doubt, that this is their last night of youth. Tomorrow they'll be renamed and reborn, and they'll be swearing themselves to a cause they'll serve for their entire lives. The lofty, untouchable Code, and the Clan itself. Sablepaw _is_ excited, but this anticipation is swamped by almost everything else. That night, with everyone else in the den out cold and snoring, she simply can't sleep.

Her mind is buzzing and her skin crawls, and she thinks of everything her future might entail. Oblivion doesn't even seem to be an option.

Softly, as slowly as she can, Sablepaw rises and inches her way out of the den. The camp is deserted, eerily lit by faint crumbs of moonlight. She keeps the shadows, worried someone is watching - someone like Morningstorm, who might kill her for the small crime of sneaking out after dark. She needn't bother - with her bright eyes narrowed to slits, in the gloom of the night, she's almost invisible. She makes it to the forest unscathed, with the none the wiser for her escapade.

She thinks of the bane of the woods: fox, badger, or cat, of whatever face it might bear, but she has to dismiss it. _If it found me, it might go easy on me, too. Maybe it's just the kind of effect I have._

Sablepaw pads through the forest, pine needles soft and silent underfoot. It seems to smell different at night; the scents sharper, undercut with dew, as though the darkness itself has a flavour.

She doesn't venture far from camp - that's a little too rebellious, even for her - but instead finds her way to the clear moonlit swamp where she first learned to corner frogs and catch fish. The water is bright and unmoving, and seems to reflect the moon one hundredfold, a shade of silver like mercury. She hasn't been here for moons, but it seems like a place frozen in time, unable to change. Sablepaw wonders if the night will ever end, if only she stays here: watching the still water and the willow at its edge, caught amongst the serenity that seems to hang, mistily, in the air.

And then she realizes she's not alone at all.

"Don't freak out," Strongpaw says, apologetically, as she spins around with her fur on end. His warning seems to come too late.

She scoffs and lets her fur settle, as calmly as it can. "Freak out? Over you? I wouldn't waste an iota of my being on trying that."

"Fair," Strongpaw says, though he hesitates.

"You should leave," Sablepaw says, facing the water again. "Before I push you in the swamp or do anything else untoward."

"I thought you might still be mad," Strongpaw replies, in a tactless sort of tone. Sablepaw's pelt threatens to bristle again.

"You have a gift for understatements," she snaps. "I'm furious. I'm offended. I don't _deserve_ my place as a warrior because I didn't even have the chance to earn it. You took that away from me."

"The fighting conditions weren't fair, Sablepaw, and I didn't want you to lose. Not the assignment." Strongpaw comes to stand beside her, and stares hard at the water.

"It wouldn't matter if I lost! At least I'd know I did _that_ by myself."

"That's why I've come to propose a rematch," Strongpaw says. "To settle it. The winner and the loser."

"Here?" Sablepaw asks, peering around the clearing. It's flat and solid, and hardly a bad spot for a sparring match unless one of them rolls into the swamp.

Strongpaw just shrugs. "Sure. No rules, nothing holding us back."

Sablepaw casts a sidelong glance at him and runs calculations through her head. "That sounds fair. I hope you remember how to land a real blow."

And, while he's distracted by her repartee, she leaps on his back and clings to him like a stubborn tick, pummeling his ribs with rapid kicks from her hindlegs. She leans in close, so they don't overbalance, and his scent floods her nose: ferns and moss, familiar threads of marsh and pine. He's quick to counter her move, dropping reflexively to the ground and beginning to roll. Sablepaw leaps away before she's crushed, and forced to suffocate under all his fur.

For good measure, she steps away from the pond's edge. _She_ will not be the one returning to camp soaking wet, with a mouthful of algae for her troubles. But Strongpaw is quicker than she planned for, and grabs her tail before she's out of range. He brings her crashing to the ground. It's a hard landing, on her side, and from the corner of her she sees her opponent back up and prepare to pounce. As he throws himself into the air, Sablepaw twists onto her stomach. When he lands, she rakes his belly with her claws - only lightly, because she's not really trying to gut him. The movement pushes him back, and gives her time to roll back to her feet and execute a swift back-kick.

She turns just in time to see him fall back, but there's a glow in his eyes, an undefeated light. They swarm towards each other in unison, unlikely parodies of each other: stepping when the other steps, twisting, rearing, like mirrors. They rise onto their hindlegs and grapple with each other, though Strongpaw is far stronger and wrestles her, slowly, inescapably, to the ground. He smothers her for a moment, before Sablepaw gathers her senses and kicks his stomach: she rolls with her momentum and breaks his grip, coming out on top. She clubs his head as quickly as she can, but Strongpaw's clearly learned something from their last bout. He bites her paw and topples her to the ground, the way the wind snatches an errant leaf from a tree and flings it into the air.

Sablepaw rolls and rolls, until she fetches up against a tree in the shadows. Carefully, deviously, she narrows her eyes to slits.

Strongpaw stares into the darkness, as though he can burn away the shade with the simple force of his gaze, but misses her movements entirely as she skulks around a sapling and onto the roots of a tall, twisted tree. As Strongpaw swings his head around to stare the other way, clearly hesitant to creep into the darkness himself, she leaps from the root into the air, flying through the night, aiming herself with predatory clarity. They collide and barrel along the ground, until Sablepaw manages to flip herself up the right way and pin Strongpaw to the ground. His head hangs from the edge of dry ground, suspended above the swamp water in uncomfortable proximity, though his whiskers skim the surface.

She places her paw on his throat and threatens to push down. "Concede defeat, mortal," she purrs, voice rich with satisfaction.

"Okay, okay!" he exclaims, holding perfectly still. "You win. Please don't punish me further."

Sablepaw plants herself on his chest and sits down, though she removes her paw. "Give me one good reason."

The silence stretches on for a long moment.

"Because I'm sorry," Strongpaw says, staring up at the sky, as though willing himself away from this predicament. "Because I want this to be the last time that we fight."

Sablepaw thinks, strangely, of Silverpaw, who had been so happy to believe her two closest friends were finally getting along, finally, almost, liking each other. So she says, "Me too. That's what I want." So she relents, and climbs from his chest, and gives him a small, soft smile that would never see the light of day.

Not that Strongpaw sees it. He's too busy throwing his head back in relief, and howling as the murky water closes over his eyes.

* * *

They're all very surprised come morning. The apprentices wake as one, thrilling with the promise of the immediate future, and rush out of the den as a pack. They pick their breakfast - almost all of them make the same comment, that _this is their last meal as apprentices_ \- and groom each other. Sablepaw sits with Nettlepaw, who fusses over her fur more than strictly necessary.

With little fanfare, a haggard old tom limps from his den and regards his Clan with clouded eyes. The apprentices don't notice him at first, subsumed in their own excitement, but a hush falls over the camp, a wonderment. Sablepaw is one of the last to look up, and feels her mouth fall open is comical shock. His fur lies in clumps along his spine, and his ribs looks like mere twigs beneath his skin. He looks already dead.

"I have not seen you, my Clan, for many moons," Oakstar says. His voice rasps and catches, but they all hear his words, every last one. "For that I am sorry. But I have not forgotten you or our ways."

He seems to be looking at the apprentices, but Sablepaw can't find any recognition in his eyes.

"There is nothing that would please me more than to recognise our oldest apprentices as full members of ShadowClan."

The group looks around, and find their feet. None of them expected this: it had seemed like Morningstorm would conduct their ascendancy. Softly, almost shy before this leader they do not know, they walk towards him and stop at his feet. He looms over them a little, standing on a hillock of dirt warped and lifted from the ground by the force of the giant tree's roots. Oakstar names them, one by one, and Sablepaw feels another flicker of surprise. Morningstorm, or perhaps Stripethorn, his son, has taken pains to inform the leader about all of them, and made sure he remembered.

"These times trouble me deeply," Oakstar begins. "But with these young warriors, ShadowClan has the strength to survive what comes."

He looks down at them for a fleeting second. His eyes are pale, vague, but Sablepaw feels a hint of foreboding.

"I, Oakstar, leader of ShadowClan, call upon StarClan to look down upon these apprentices. They have trained to understand and uphold the commandments of the Warrior Code, and so shall be commended as warriors in turn. Apprentices, do you promise to protect Clan and Code, even at great cost and suffering?"

"I do," Sablepaw says, but her voice is part of a collective, an echo of her friends.

"Then by the powers of StarClan, I give you your warrior names. Pepperpaw, from this moment on you will be known as Pepperstripe. StarClan honours your strength and determination."

Sablepaw purrs, as the whole Clan does, when Pepperstripe steps forward to lick the leader's shoulder. She almost thinks she can hear her father's baritone rumbling in the crowd.

"Smokepaw," he continues. The large grey tom puffs up a bit, unnecessarily. "From this moment on you will be known as Smokestrike. StarClan honours your bravery and skill." Smokestrike licks his shoulder and Oakstar, swaying ever so slightly, begins the next round. "Nettlepaw, from this moment on, you will be known as Nettlebreeze. StarClan honours your warmth."

Nettlebreeze licks his shoulder and joins her brother, bumping him playfully with her shoulder. Their eyes are on Rainpaw, the last of their litter.

"Rainpaw," Oakstar says. "From this moment you will be known as Rainwing. StarClan commends your courage and kindness."

Oakstar turns those strange eyes on Sablepaw and Silverpaw. She remembers her apprentice ceremony - when she'd been a tiny lick of black fur - where her sister had been the first to be renamed and passed off to Honeyleap, her mentor.

Oakstar, then as now, begins with her. "Silverpaw, from this moment on you will be known as Silvershine. StarClan honours your courage and honesty."

Sablepaw feels her heart swell in her chest, as she watches her sister step up before the Clan, carried along by the noise of their pride and acceptance. Something in her had almost never expected this moment, but she'd never thought about the alternative - Silvershine had never thirsted after being a warrior, never really wanted it as much as the rest of them. But she's thrilled nonetheless.

"And," the leader wheezes, as she feels her pulse spike. "Sablepaw."

She straightens her spine as the old tom gazes down at her, hoping to approximate something close to worthiness.

"From this moment onwards, you shall be known as Sableshade. StarClan honours your loyalty and intelligence."

Sableshade barely feels her legs carry her to Oakstar, but his frame (shrunken, fallen in on itself with the air of neglect) fills her vision, and she tastes his fur as she brushes her tongue against his shoulder. She meets his eyes one last time, while the semblance of finality hangs between them, before she turns and joins her friends. Silvershine licks her cheek.

From there, the ceremony resembles something she remembers seeing before, some six moons ago. Sunpaw and Strongpaw stand poised before Oakstar, under the eyes of the whole Clan. This time, Sableshade's not late.

"Sunpaw, from this moment on you will be known as Sunfeather. StarClan applauds your spirit and energy."

Sableshade looks to Strongpaw. She feels something like pride for this tom; he's grown up without a father, without a mother too, really, and yet he stands here with the rest of them, possibly brighter and kinder and deeper than the whole Clan combined.

Oakstar looks at the last apprentice. "Finally, Strongpaw. From this moment on you will be known as Strongclaw. StarClan commends your energy and dedication."

Strongclaw licks the leader's shoulder, and with that, the rest of the Clan begins to cheer, a jumble of sound that slowly forms itself into names: "Pepperstripe, Smokestrike! Nettlebreeze! Rainwing! Silvershine! Sableshade! Sunfeather! Strongclaw!"

She looks into their ranks, and sees her mother, sleek in the sunlight; her father, proud of his firstborns; Bramblenose, who simultaneously looks very pleased with himself and very happy for her; the other mentors, who seem somewhat relieved; far away, almost pressed into the shadows, even Morningstorm watches, some unreadable mask on her face.

When Sableshade looks back, after a long minute, Oakstar has once again disappeared.

* * *

The vigil is long and cold, but she sits by her sister and protects the Clan, though there's not a trace of that strange woodland blight to be seen. She feels someone watching her instead of the shadows. She doesn't look back.

* * *

It's not long before the next Gathering, and Sableshade begins to prepare herself for the inevitability: she'll have to go, and she'll have to front up to that strange fear that swamps her when she sees too many cats in one place, or feels too many eyes upon her skin. Even more worrying, she'll have to see Eaglepaw again, and he'll probably call it a date, and he might even flirt with her. She ends up feeling very unprepared anyway, because she's never flirted in her life and doesn't know how it works.

In the meantime, life as a warrior ticks along smoothly. She and her friends claim a recessed spot deep in the warrior den, where there's a tiny hole to sneak in and out of. Pepperstripe and Smokestrike push their nest as close as possible to Jayflight, who definitely notices, but doesn't seem to mind. Sableshade curls up close to Nettlebreeze at night, and they both rise religiously early to begin their day. Strongclaw and Silvershine spend long hours in the forest: Sableshade think he's scouring the territory for a hint, a clue, a mere trace of the beast. He doesn't seem to find it. Meanwhile, Stripethorn begins paying an inordinate amount of attention to Nettlebreeze who, Sableshade notices, isn't quick to refute him. (Sunfeather avoids her mother and begins to look relieved).

When the list is announced, Sableshade steels herself. Rainwing and Silvershine are giggling about Eaglepaw, knowing full well the mention of him turns her mouth dry as bone - they've been wondering about his warrior name _all_ morning, and coming up with increasingly ferocious options, despite Strongclaw plonking himself down mid-conversation to ask if Eaglepaw failed his assessments and is still a poor, lowly apprentice. Sableshade chimes in to suggest perhaps he skipped the whole warrior phase (overrated, by any means) and went straight into elder-hood. As they bicker among themselves, Morningstorm rises in the center of camp like a bad smell.

"Attention, ShadowClan!" she yowls. "The Gathering is tonight. We will be taking a large party, so our newly minted warriors can enjoy their first adult outing. Once again, Oakstar will not be attending. I will be taking Bramblenose, Littlefern, Miststreak, Sunfeather, Rainwing, Honeyleap, Silvershine, Sableshade, Smokestrike, Icecloud, Pepperstripe, Sedgewing, Strongclaw, Pinepaw and Nettlebreeze. Be in camp before we depart."

"Seems like Bramblenose's excommunication has been lifted," Silvershine chirps. She has a point: Sableshade's former mentor hasn't been to a Gathering since the accident with Palefur. Perhaps successfully mentoring two apprentices into adulthood has done the trick.

"And it looks like I'll finally get to meet this elusive Eaglepaw," Nettlebreeze says with a smirk, returning with ease to their previous conversation. "He hasn't been to any Gathering I've attended, but I think the stars have aligned for me today."

The other she-cats dissolve into giggles and throw pointed glances in Sableshade's direction, who immediately feels like melting into the next available patch of shadows. There's companionable silence for a moment.

"You know," Strongclaw says, "I think he's a medicine cat now. Very celibate."

* * *

Walking into the Gathering with her sister at her side, Sableshade does not feel nearly so overwhelmed, so lost. Strongclaw walks on her other side, and they're loosely thronged by their friends, who stride into the clearing with extra bounce in their step. They're the second Clan to arrive: only WindClan has beat them here, with a small, modest party. Their leader, Splashstar, sits waiting on the Great Rock, ginger-and-white tail curled over her paws. She hadn't struck a favourable impression on Sableshade, last she saw her: she spouted words of omen and doom more appropriately voiced by medicine cats. To her surprise, Morningstorm heads straight for her, even speaking words of apparent greeting. Sedgewing follows her and sits by another WindClan cat, close enough to the Great Rock to hug it. It must be their medicine cat.

ShadowClan makes themselves at home in the hollow, though none sit very close to the band of WindClanners. There are seven of them, including an apprentice Sableshade recognizes from last time. None bother to turn around.

Strongclaw picks a spot at the back of the clearing, shadowed and private, well-hidden from his mother. "Don't worry about Eaglepaw," he says brusquely, over his shoulder. "I'll flag him down when ThunderClan arrives."

Sableshade just rolls her eyes and sits, though an undercurrent of nerves run through her veins. Everyone's made a much bigger deal of this than it needs to be. Besides, despite everyone's good-natured teasing, inter-Clan relationships are still very much forbidden. She's not so quick to forget the oath she's just sworn her life to. In fact, she's been thinking of this more, lately; she's decided to be ShadowClan's resident spinster, the fun aunt who will smile at the children of her friends and family, and perhaps teach them a tricky move or two. Everyone else will just have to discover this for themselves.

She can't wallow too long contemplating her loveless future because RiverClan and ThunderClan arrive in tandem. She recognises some from last time, but there are many new faces here tonight. Sableshade slides a glance at Silvershine and thinks she'd make an apt shield.

"There he is!" Rainwing hisses, jerking her head in the vague direction of every single ThunderClan cat who's just arrived. Sableshade's eyes go unerringly to the familiar golden-brown pelt in the crowd, the notorious Eagle-something. Strongclaw begins waving his ridiculous, fluffy tail like a banner. He'd have to be blind to miss it.

Sure enough, the ThunderClan tom begins to head over, bringing Lilypaw, Whitepaw, and a couple of bouncing apprentices. He's filled out over the moons; he has broad shoulders, a wide chest, a handsomely sharp jaw. Nettlebreeze turns her head and gives Sableshade a very pointed look. The other cats arrive and nod a greeting.

He spots Sableshade and strides over, blue eyes wide, peculiarly bright in the moonlight. "Hi," he says, sliding to a stop. "I'm Eaglestorm. Who are you?"

She rolls her eyes, but she smiles. "Sableshade."

He raises a singular, devious brow. "Dark. Mysterious. I like it."

"It's not as formidable as yours, but it will do," she replies, shugging a shoulder. Eaglestorm throws his head back, mock showing-off, but sits down beside her with impressively strict posture. She begins pointing to her friends and naming them, finishing with her littermates. "That's Pepperstripe, my brother, and my sister Silvershine."

Silvershine looks over her shoulder and gives Eaglestorm a bright smile, although the way she waggles her whiskers is enough to be deemed mischievous.

"Lilypaw and Whitepaw are now Lilymist and Whitefire. And these apprentices are my nephews, Oatpaw and Spiderpaw." The two small toms are sat at the head of the group, staring eagerly at the leaders. Meanwhile, the two she-cats have sat beside Smokestrike and Sunfeather.

"You're chaperoning their first Gathering?" Sableshade asks, snorting. "What a gallant uncle."

He just shrugs. "My sister threatened to skin me if they came back with so much as a hair out of place. What I do, I do for self-preservation." But the way he looks at the apprentices is far warmer than his words.

"Who's your sister?" she asks, though the name will mean nothing to her, and she can't conjure a face to match. She's being amicable.

"Owlfrost," he replies, with a twitch of his ear. "You haven't met her, but you'd like her."

Sableshade narrows her eyes at him. "Do bird names run in your family or something? Like a theme?"

Eaglestorm snorts. "They do. It's hard to explain, but at least everyone knows we're related."

"So if I ever meet a ThunderClanner with some kind of bird name I'll know immediately I've just met your cousin or your mother. Got it." Sableshade looks at the two young apprentices who have, for now, avoided the family legacy.

"Exactly," he agrees. "And you'll know to run far, far away."

At that moment, the leaders stand and clear their throats. Morningstorm stands tallest, proudest, though she's the only one among them not ordained by StarClan, not blessed with nine lives. She's a farce, but it doesn't show; she looks like the realest, the strongest of them.

"Let's commence the Gathering," Crowstar says, with an indulgent twitch of his ear. "RiverClan has prospered over the last moon, and we have brought along our newest apprentice, Cootpaw, tonight. We have welcomed two new warriors as well, Hailpelt and Whitefire."

Sableshade cheers politely, as does everyone, but something catches her attention in the corner of her eye. Rainwing and Strongclaw have gotten up; the she-cat leads him to the edge of the clearing, to the mild seclusion of the shadows. But they have not gone far enough, because Sableshade can still see their every movement. Only their words are hidden. There's a light in Rainwing's eyes that seems to cut through the shadows.

"Imagine being named Cootpaw," Eaglestorm says, pointed straight ahead, not diverted at all. "Poor bastard. He'll never get over the shame."

Rainwing's speaking, looking positively anecdotal.

Sableshade tries to pay attention: to the leaders, as Crowstar steps back and Morningstorm takes his place, to the tom beside her, to the touch of his fur against hers.

"ShadowClan has welcomed many new warriors since last moon. They have done well and earned their place in the Clan."

The Gathering begins to cheer for her, and Eaglestorm bumps her shoulder in congratulations. Rainwing keeps speaking, looking almost urgent, like she's trying to speak her mind before her words dry up and she has nothing left to say. Strongclaw is nodding. The adulation of the crowd just washes over her, blank noise.

Rainwing fidgets, her glance roving over the clearing, everywhere but the tom in front of her. She must force herself to look, because she stares him down, talking again, compelling him with both eyes and words.

"I hope your leader recovers soon," Eaglestorm says. "I'm not sure I like your deputy too much."

"Get in line," she murmurs.

It must be Splashstar talking now, speaking of cold winds and horizons dark with shadows, the strength of the wind and the chill of its touch. No, it's definitely Splashstar.

Strongclaw looks quizzical, opens his mouth, all the while Eaglestorm's tail brushes her flank and Splashstar prophesiers on.

"Well, she can't be as bad as Splashstar," the other tom replies. "I'd hate to live with her, let alone follow her commands."

Sableshade twitches her ear, still watching the clandestine scene unfolding before her, and says, "There are different kinds of bad."

She misses the look Eaglestorm gives her, a beacon of almost-familial concern.

And then it happens: they both look at her, at Eaglestorm. Strongclaw is first, his eyes quick and full of understanding, and Rainwing seems to follow it, seems to realize something herself. She shakes her head like she can't believe it. She asks him a long question then, eyes narrow and ablaze, and Sableshade cannot read lips, but she recognises well enough the word that Strongclaw speaks, one small admission of something that looks like guilt.

 _Yes_.

Rainwing shakes her head once more, delivers her parting line, and walks away.

Sableahde forces herself to look back, first to Eaglestorm, then to Fernstar on the Great Rock. She purrs when Spiderpaw and Oatpaw are acknowledged, just to see the look on Eaglestorm's face: pure pride, explicit happiness. It's a nice thing to witness.

* * *

"One particular couple were getting _verrry_ cosy," Silvershine says, batting her eyelashes.

Her mind goes to Strongclaw and Rainwing, immediately, though she knows that's not who she means. Rainwing is still AWOL, and Strongclaw is silent, blank-faced. She itches to know what was said, and she's begun to guess, though it's far from her place.

"Handsome, isn't he?" she says, instead of the hundred questions burning up inside her. "It's a shame it can't really go anywhere."

"Sure it can," Nettlebreeze says, with a dismissive flick of her tail. "You just need the right attitude." She looks, with flair, back at her brother. "Smokestrike can be your guide. He's completely into the whole forbidden romance routine."

"One forbidden romance per generation is enough for me," Sableshade says, shrugging. "I wouldn't want to be a cliche." She remembers her five-year plan, her pending fun-aunt role. Surely there's a nice ThunderClan she-cat out there with minimal issues and a _deep_ willingness to bear Eaglestorm's handsome little kits. It sure as hell can't be her.

"You might change your mind," Silvershine says simply, with a soft little smile. "I think he's smitten. You've got to give him a chance."

"Watch me _not do that_ ," she replies, rolling her eyes. When she looks back, her sister's developed this stern little frown, good-natured enough. She looks suitably chastising, even as she touches Sableshade gently with her tail, as if to wake her up.

"Then stop leading him on."

* * *

She doesn't get to dwell on this for long, but she knows her sister is right, and she kind of hates it. First, it means acknowledging that she has something with Eaglestorm at all, and then it means crushing it all into dust. She's not very good with her feelings, let alone admitting them and, just as quickly, condemning them to obliteration. But Silvershine is inexorably right. She begins to plan the next Gathering, picks and chooses the right words, the way to let him down gently, and pin the blame on the code and not her inability to take action. She goes to sleep that night still plotting.

The next morning is, she supposes, the worst of her life.

They all wake later than usual, after the excitement of the Gathering; even the senior warriors are slow to rise, so Sableshade and Silvershine are the first out. It's still morning, the sky distinctly misty, and cold. The air is bone-chilling, in a way. She doesn't blame the others for their reluctance. But they're beginning to stir; she can hear her mother and father exchange morning pleasantries, hear Toadstep greet his fellows with his normal happy bugle.

It must have happened in the night, perhaps only an hour after they returned, silent and unwitnessed, distressingly alone. His body is small and shrunken, frozen to the touch, but his eyes are wide open, and it's the first thing she sees. Those blank, cloudy eyes, and the deadness in them. She'd last seen them when she became a warrior, when she'd stared into them with an unease she wondered if he shared. Oakstar, so frail and aged, had only lasted one half-moon longer.

"No."

She thinks the word comes from her, until she looks at her sister, and the horror in her delicate eyes. As she looks, the grey she-cat opens her mouth and screams the word, again, again, until faces peer from their dens at the commotion.

Sableshade draws closer to her sister and hushes her, but it's too late; exclamations rise all around her, from the others who are just discovering this for themselves. She stares still at poor dead Oakstar, even as she sees something rise beyond him, something tall and gold and ready. He looks wasted away, brittle, his bones too sharp under his skin. No wonder Silvershine screamed; he looks awful, worse than death.

And then it strikes her, over the head, impatiently; this must be his last life. He's not coming back.

This time his death will last forever.

Morningstorm strides ever more into view, impassable, unreadable, hardly looking humane at all. Power and status are all hers now, and she's putting on a good show of not looking gleeful about it.

"ShadowClan," she says, and everyone looks to her now, for they must, "this is a tragedy."

"Bullshit," Strongclaw breathes, standing just behind her. "She hated him for abandoning the Clan. She thought he was weak."

"Oakstar has suffered for a long time," she continues, bowing her head. "We must believe he is at peace now. You see, he'd lived a very conservative life, a careful one. When his mate died, he had six lives left."

The Clan starts to murmur in horror. "His heartache killed him six times over," Morningstorm says. "He would not eat. He could not sleep. His love for Palefur began to _murder_ him even as he clung to it. StarClan brought him back each time, but it never helped. He started the cycle all over again. The last time he died, he'd just orchestrated the warrior ceremony. It was the last thing he could do for his Clan."

Meadowmist sobs and hurries from the nursery to her father's side. Stripethorn just looks on from a distance, bleak.

"I could do nothing, save prolonging his life a little longer each time," Specklefrost says, looking small. She's the medicine cat, and Sableshade's never really met her. "Often he wouldn't let me see him. He wouldn't take poppy seeds for the pain."

"We should prepare his body," her apprentice, Sedgewing, urges. "Complete the rituals and the vigil and let Morningstorm ascend."

"It's back luck for a Clan to go long without a leader," Embertooth says, agreeing.

Morningstorm nods, before setting her shoulders in a stiff, rigid pose. "Prepare him," she orders, glancing at the medicine cats. "We'll hold the vigil tonight and, in the morning, I will set out to claim my rightful nine lives as ShadowClan's new leader."

The Clan acquiesces, and the warriors begin to shuffle around, setting out to complete their duties despite the awful black cloud lingering over camp.

Morningstorm clears her throat, loud, imperial. Everyone halts.

"We've seen what happened to Oakstar, what condition afflicted him," she proclaims. "I have something further to say." She strides to the tree in the center of camp and leaps with ease into its lowermost branches. The shadows glaze her, just barely, but her amber eyes burn in the darkness, bright beacons, a call to arms.

"Oakstar's deaths were full of pain and anguish," she begins. "They were, each of them, entirely avoidable."

Strongclaw exhales beside her, long and heavy, uncertain.

Morningstorm continues, each word bright, almost prophetic in its clarity and reason. There's venom in her voice, a burning warmth. "Long ago, ShadowClan was sent a savant, our chance for salvation. She had an idea - a revelation. Brightstar was a revolutionary, but few saw this. They chased her from the Clan when she voiced her thoughts, her hope, and her idea never took seed. But it has to. If ShadowClan wants to survive, it _must_.

Brightstar was the first to discover there is a blight among us, a poison _in us_. It killed without discrimmination, addled minds, stole will and soul. It corrupted our hearts; it convinced brave warriors to break their own code and seek out mates beyond their Clan. For tens of years, this poison has been the paramount threat to our way of life and the Code we swear ourselves to. It makes cowards of us all. It turns us blind, deaf, dumbstruck. We are all beings of reason here, so I know you will understand when I say this poison must be destroyed. I will burn it from us, kill it at its source, and save you all. We will live as Brightstar intended, and better the mistakes of our foolish ancestors."

There is a long, long silence. There's an air of general confusion about, and no one seems to quite understand what she means.

"What do you mean, mother?" Strongclaw calls out, his voice hard. "Are we diseased? Are we ill?"

Morningstorm gives him a look of benevolent pity. "More than you know."

"What's the blight?" Bramblenose asks. "Is it what hides in the woods and lashes out at defenceless elders as they walk by? Because that's the only thing I see plaguing us."

The deputy just closes her eyes and sighs. "Open your mind and close your hearts," she announces. "Many of you have known it your whole lives. You've never realised it to be a danger. You might feel you should resist what I'm about to say, but for the sake of all of us, you should not. It's truer than any thought you've ever had, and I am now your leader, so you cannot disobey me."

The Clan hangs from a precipice, and Morningstorm begins to prise away their grip one claw at a time.

"Love has always been the enemy you never knew you faced," she cries, above the murmurs that rise into the clearing. No one, it's clear, appreciates this idea.

"Without it we could be so much stronger. If you could see yourself as I do, you'd see you are _weak_. You are _shades_ of the warriors you could be. Do as I say and I will make you into what you desire."

The senior warriors begin to say _no_ , resoundingly, and everyone else takes it up, cries it out.

"Females and males will begin to live separately," Morningstorm decrees. "Mentors will only train apprentices of the same gender. I will pair warriors together to produce the strongest offspring. We all, together, will wipe the land of this taint. From this moment, henceforth, all love is punishable by death."

The Clan revolts in fractions, in gasps and shouts, in pleading, in begging, in refusal. Sableshade is frozen in the midst of it. How would Morningstorm have them live? Hating all, waking and sleeping in silence, forbidden to each other? Living a shadow of a life, unreachable? She wonders if Oakstar ever knew she was a monster. Did he realize, in the end, that Morningstorm might be the beast of the forest after all?

"I suppose you killed Palefur to teach us all this lesson?" Sableshade calls out, voice ringing above it all, far clearer than she'd hoped to manage. "You murdered an elder for this?"

Morningstorm slows and freezes, until only her eyes move, falling on Sableahde with predatory stillness.

"What did you say?" Morningstorm snaps, at a clearing suddenly silent.

"Oakstar died this way just to prove your point. Didn't he? They were both just machinations, a part of your ploy, to shock us into submission and make us believe your lies."

"Blasphemic," she says. "It was a fox, or a badger, or whatever animal was wandering the territories moons ago."

"We saw hair nor hide of fox or badger. I saw the murder scene. I saw the bloody paw prints of a cat leading away from a crime. I, for one, reject a leader that murders her own for power and madness. I hope everyone would."

The Clan ripples, reforms, stares hard at the golden she-cat above them. They can see it too.

"But you saw it nonetheless," Morningstorm hisses. "The price. The cost of it."

"You admit it," Toadstep says, crestfallen.

Morningstorm laughs, too loud, and shakes her head. "I didn't say that."

"We can't let this stand," Toadstep says, softly; this is his sister, after all, the thing he's loved and protected since his life began. "You are not fit to lead us."

"We're not safe with you here," Strongclaw adds, eyes like chips of ice, a glacial blue. "You'd ruin us."

Morningstorm sneers, but she senses the change in the crowd, the shift from passive into something else, a channel of aggression.

"Follow me or die," she says.

Stripethorn is the first to launch himself up the tree, claws extended, reaching for her throat. Meadowmist follows, barreling through the crowd, and everyone begins to move. Sableshade bounds towards her, even as the disgraced deputy leaps, ever graceful, from her perch and flees into the forest. She doesn't put up a fight.

Still, even out-numbered, she is not outmatched. She melts into the forest, running silently, a simple blur against the undergrowth. Sableshade holds her scent in her mouth and follows dutifully, her brother at her side. She's still reeling from Morningstorm's words, her demands, even the prospect of living as she commanded. She'd rather die, so Morningstorm must go, chased from the territory like a rogue, or be put down like a dog. It has shocked her, this sudden preaching of ideology, the madness masked as necessity, but she's not _truly_ surprised. She'd always thought Morningstorm was capable of much more, desired something _else_. The exact nature of it is what unsettles her.

Together, Sableshade and Pepperstripe run until they reach the edge of the territory. They can hear the steps, the shouts of the other warriors in the distance. There's no trace of Morningstorm to be found. It's eerie.

They pace the border for a while longer, making sure she's truly gone. It will take them days to feel safe again; moons, years until they are free of paranoia. For all they know, she lurks in the shadows, fulfilling her last threat: they didn't follow her, so in turn they must die. The pair have to concede the she's not out there - at least, that they won't be the ones to find her - and return, slowly, to camp. They aren't the first back; some never left.

Silvershine huddles with their mother by the nursery: inside are Meadowmist's fledgling kits, almost ready to be apprenticed. The elders sit by Oakstar's body, as does Specklefrost, who smooths fragrant herbs over his pelt and attempts to make him look tidy. Swanpath and Sleetclaw patrol the edges of camp, looking wary. A small group of warriors is gathered by the leader's den, locked deep in a hushed discussion.

Sableshade looks at her brother and shrugs. They're warriors, and their Clan faces calamity. Who would kick them out?

They join the group, shaking their heads in dismissal: they did not find her. No one has.

"We'll post guards around camp," Thornstreak says. "Day and night. Everyone has to be vigilant."

"And double patrols," Toadstep adds. "She's a capable warrior, and if we're ambushed…"

"Would she go anywhere?" Sableshade asks him. "Does she have a place? Somewhere to hide?"

The other warrior just shakes his head. "She knows how to disappear, and she keeps her secrets close to her chest. She could be anywhere."

"We have more bad news," Smokestrike announces. He strides towards the huddle with a dark look in his eyes. "Sedgewing and Swiftstream have disappeared too. We can only assume they've gone with her."

Everyone shakes their heads. It's madness, of course, but not every cat in the Clan is sane.

Playing the pragmatist, Icecloud says," We're lucky it's them and not all of us."

Indeed, the scene here could be very different right now, if only they'd all played along. They could be her puppets, her playthings. It's a bleak thought. They collectively banish it and move on.

More warriors arrive back in camp; Bramblenose, Honeyleap, and Stripethorn; Nettlebreeze and Strongclaw; Gorsespots, Meadowmist, and Fussyfur. Everyone comes back in clumps, as though they're afraid to be alone. It's smart, in truth. Especially knowing the enemy is not alone, not a singular threat.

Toadstep announces their plan: they need a leader, and a deputy, to restore themselves to a semblance of normality. ShadowClan must shed any lingering vulnerability to survive. There's general confusion, however, when it comes to picking any sort of authority figure. Succession is always, naturally, left to the leaders; they're simply good at this kind of thing (discounting Oakstar).

"We'll vote," Icecloud suggests. "Go find a stone, everyone."

Everyone disperses, curious, but the elders stay behind, and bend their heads in hushed discussion with several senior warriors.

Sableshade ends up scouring the surrounding forest with Strongclaw, who finds two stones but can't really decide which he prefers.

"Just give one to me," she says helplessly, as he stares at each in turn with a critical eye.

"This one is nice and pointy," he says, resembling a crow guarding its hoard. "But this one is very smooth and round."

Sableshade sighs and turns back to the undergrowth, almost missing his snicker. She finds a pebble in the next minute, and her friend's eyes nearly turn green with jealousy (he must be mocking her, of course, with this newfound appreciation for sediment, but his fawning really does cheer her up). When they return to camp, the elders stand before the crowd, prepared to deliver the concept of democracy onto their captive audience.

"It has been a strange morning," Budgiewing begins, musingly. "I'm about to ask you to make it stranger. You will elect candidates for leader and vote for them by laying your pebble at their feet. The leader will be the cat with the most votes. Only kits will not be allowed a vote."

"I propose Toadstep for leader!" someone calls, immediately. It might be his mate.

"I put Honeyleap forward," shouts Stripethorn.

"Icecloud!"

The grey tom looks amused at this, conflicted, even. "I'm hardly an appropriate candidate," he says, rejecting his proposition in one smooth line.

"Any more?" Budgiewing asks, though he's answered only with silence. "Vote for your choice by giving them your stone."

Some move forward immediately, but Sableshade hangs back, deliberating. Honeyleap was Silvershine's mentor, but does this familiarity mean she must pledge loyalty? Toadstep is eternally friendly, a force for good - and he's certainly stepped up in the wake of his sister's betrayal - but does that mean he'll lead them well? And yet… either option is a far cry from Oakstar and his would-be successor.

She votes for Toadstep. His pile grows exponentially, until it's clear, even without an official count, that he's won. He seems almost overwhelmed. The medicine cat takes him aside to council him while the elders tally the votes. Specklefrost looks like she's trying to explain something to a kit. Maybe that's just her face.

At last, Tawnyfrost clears her throat and draws the Clan's attention. Everyone reforms, breaking up their little groups of gossip and rumour.

"The votes have been counted. Toadstep will lead ShadowClan from this dark hour and restore us to the light."

The Clan cheers, and sets up a chant of _Toadstar! Toadstar! Toadstar!_ The tom in question dips his head, and regards them all with a paternal gleam in his eyes.

"Thank you," he says. "I'm not sure I deserve this honour. In the morning, Specklefrost and I will set off for High Stones to claim my nine lives. Meanwhile, as my first act as leader, I appoint Honeyleap as my deputy."

Everyone cheers again. It's though they're banishing even the memory of Morningstorm from the clearing, simply replacing her and celebrating it. It's a cause Sableshade can get behind.

It seems like everyone's cause.

* * *

Toadstep is true to his word. She rises early the next morning, just to witness the tom gulp down his traveling medicine and depart with Specklefrost. Strongclaw watches with her.

"Aren't you sad?" she asks, sliding him a glance. Sunfeather hasn't stopped frowning, but her brother seems jovial, content.

"Sad?" he scoffs. "I'm fucking relieved."

It seems to be true: when she looks closer, under all his bluster, he looks genuinely happy. Carefree. She hasn't seen him like that for a long while.

Late in the day, the intrepid duo returns: it's announced that StarClan has accepted him, blessing him with nine lives and a new name. Toadstar really is their new leader. He looks no different: still thin, but not scrawny, angular, but no sharper or harder than he had been when he left. His eyes are still deep and warm, and he looks nothing like Morningstorm. It's a relief.

The days begin to pass again, even with the shadow of Morningstorm looming over them all. They walk more patrols, looking a little closer at the dark patches of the forest. They find nothing. The next week, Redsong moves into the nursery, but she has no mate to speak of. _It was Swiftstream_ , Nettlebreeze says, in a soft undertone. _Maybe she would've gone with him if she had the chance_. Silvershine rolls her eyes at that and just says, _You'd like that, wouldn't you?_

Toadstar gets to perform his very first ceremony just days after that, when Meadowmist's kits reach apprenticing age. The scrutiny of the Clan is on him, but he does admirably. There are five kits, all an eccentric and unmistakable blend of their parents: Ashpaw, Cloudpaw, Firepaw, Flurrypaw and Briarpaw. Toadstar says all the right words in all the right places; just like that, he's on par with Oakstar, just as adequate a leader as their old one. The mood hanging over ShadowClan seems to lighten. Toadstar is, at the very least, competent. (And he shows no signs of manic hysteria or madness, which is what they've come to respect in figures of authority).

After that, they settle into a routine, patrolling at almost every daylit hour and sending several after dark, too. Sableshade is chosen to lead a few of these despite her youth. It seems she's pretty good at sneaking through the shadows, and at spotting things lying where they don't belong.

There's something else wrong, too, but Sableshade can't figure it out. Ever since that night at the Gathering, Rainwing has been aloof, a little cold. She doesn't laugh at the jokes Sableshade makes, or dignify her comments with a response. She ignores her, and Silvershine too; her sister seems to know what's going on - it can be seen in her eyes, dark little threads of understanding and irritation - but she doesn't clue her in. It fragments their group by inches, but they're all so busy now it doesn't seem to matter. Strongclaw sticks by them in _excommunicado_ ; Rainwing doesn't speak to him either, barely looks at him when he enters camp or leaves.

She remembers that encounter: she spent more time trying to figure it out than focusing on her date. Whatever it was, it's proved to be incendiary. She wants to shout at Rainwing. _There are more important things going, hello! No one cares about your petty grudge._ Even Nettlebreeze won't take part, but she's different with her sister now, a little more sympathetic than before.

The other toms are clueless, but no one really expected them to grasp the intricacies of social cues and convents. Pepperstripe is just thrilled to have warrior duties, no matter the workload.

One night, she goes on patrol with Strongclaw. There are others there, and they're both alert and watchful, but their conversation naturally turns to gossip and banter.

"I'm surprised you're not sneaking off every other night to catch up with Eaglepaw," he snorts, whiskers twitching.

" _Storm_ ," she corrects, knowing full well how pedantic she must sound.

"Oh, right. You'd never consort with an apprentice."

Sableshade shoves him with a shoulder, very tempted to veer him off the path into the next muddy puddle she finds. "No, I'd never consort with a ThunderClanner."

Strongclaw stares at her, a motion she catches in the corner of her eye: it makes her feel flushed, a little nervous.

"You are a stickler for the rules. You'd never break the Code, even for-" he lets out a ridiculous, dreamy sigh, a sound she immediately wants to shove back down his throat, " _Eaglestorm_."

"I wouldn't," she says, wondering why the concession sound so boring. "But I could." She thinks about it for a moment, the allure of the illicit. "I'd probably be great at having a secret, forbidden relationship."

She hears a snort behind them. It might be Smokestrike.

"The whole mates thing isn't really for me," she continues, faux-flippant. "I mean, kits? Motherhood? I'd never cope."

Strongclaw, amused, just asks, "You're gonna be alone for your whole life?"

"It sounds pathetic when you say it like that!" Sableshade protests.

It does. It's why she's never told anyone this.

"I'll strike a deal with you, spinster." Strongclaw is conniving. Plotting. She knows that look. "If we're both single when we're elders, we'll settle down together. Share some moss on cold nights. Ration mouse entrails with each other. Groom the bits of each other we can't reach anymore."

"Sounds quaint." It's agreeable enough. At any rate, it's not a flat-out rejection.

"We'll call it the Twilight Years pact," Strongpaw replies, jauntily. "I'll be waiting."

She sneaks a glance at him, one he doesn't miss. She almost contemplates a version of the pact where they _don't_ wait, one where they decide now to be mates for the hell of it, to bicker like an old couple while they're still young. It shocks her. Sableshade has no idea where that thought comes from. She's only left with the notion that she ought to banish it, that it doesn't belong here, in her, even if she could - only slightly, only possibly - want it. The very idea is warm, soft. Contemptible. Even as she struggles to push it aside, she thinks she could grow to like it.

Every thought is a traitorous blow. Strongclaw is not hers and he never will be. He will find someone to make him happy: someone to _cherish_ him, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Someone who smiles at him, instead of challenging him at every turn. Someone to laugh at his jokes instead of making ever grander rebuttals. Someone's who's probably her sister. They've been a perfect match since birth. _That's_ what makes sense.

"Unless I die young," Strongclaw says. "Then you're on your own."

He doesn't need to know that she already is.

* * *

They find a scent near the border again. It's not fox, not badger, not dog. It's strange, thick, and feline.

It doesn't belong to Morningstorm.

* * *

Silvershine wants to take a walk with her. It's a warm day, beauteous, really: the sun dapples the ground, the air is soft and hazy, the forest is welcoming. Everything has a kind of sepia tint, a makeshift watermark of summer. It's not in her to refuse a request from her sister, so she says yes, and trails after her as she wanders idly down a southbound path.

The sunlight is especially becoming against Silvershine's pale pelt. She looks radiant, even as the sun begins to set, and the forest is the first thing to lose the light.

As peaceful as it all seems, Sableshade can't help but keep an eye out. Just in case.

"You must be getting tired of this," Silvershine says. "Patrolling. The constant paranoia." She watches her roving eyes, but she passes no judgement.

Sableshade just shrugs. "It's something to do." It keeps her sharp, forces her awake. In a word, it's purpose.

Silvershine smiles. She's round where Sableshade is angular, softness where her sister is all edges. What she says next, as she brings Sableshade to a halt, as she looks grave and happy all at once - suffused by something Sableshade can't touch - makes sense. It's shocking, staggering, but it's the news she expected to hear one day, albeit far in the future.

"Sableshade," she says, something different in her voice, something deeper. "I wanted to tell you something. I wanted to tell you first."

She brings her to a halt with a gentle touch of her tail. The marsh is spread wide before them: tall wheaten tussock, peat-earth at their feet, light glinting off the water, turning it all to gold. She thinks up a hundred guesses - none of them right - but voices nothing. Silvershine will tell her in her own time.

"I didn't plan it," she starts. "But it's okay. It makes me happy."

 _She's in love_ , Sableshade thinks, with a start, and then of course her thoughts turn to _him_ , goddamn Strongclaw, because who else could it be? It's always been them. She's always known it - maybe that was half the reason she disliked him, because she knew one day he'd take Silvershine from her, turn her from _her_ sister to _his_ mate, and divide them with something invisible, but there all the same. She'd bet on it.

The realization rests uneasily in her.

She's only wrong by degrees.

"I'm not telling anyone else. The timing isn't right - I'm sure everyone would love some good news, but I don't want to be a target, or a burden. Especially with our parents. They'd worry so much, you know?"

"I don't," Sableshade says, waiting for the big revelation, the one she thinks she already knows.

Silvershine stares deep into her eyes. They share the same set - bright green, veridian, a hallmark of their maternal side. Sometimes it's the only feature that marks them as relatives, let alone sisters.

"You can't tell anyone else," she says, a strangely imperative note in her voice that Sableshade has never heard before. "Please. Keep it a secret."

Sableshade nods. "Okay." If secrecy is the price, she will pay it with ease.

"I'm pregnant," she says. "I found out two days ago."

And Sableshade is dumbstruck. _Who is the father?_ But she knows - she _knows_ , and for some reason it chews at her, plagues her.

Strongclaw.

It's strange that she cares. She wants to be happy, but she can only mimic the euphoria glowing in her sister's eyes, play at the happiness she sees there. The news hurts her. It's a sick pain. It shouldn't belong to her.

"Do you love him?" she asks, whisper-soft. That's all that matters. Her happiness. Silvershine nods, emphatic.

"And he loves me. You don't have to worry about that."

It's too late. Sableshade is always given to worry, about one thing or another. But this is different. This is personal; it feels like melancholy, an ache inside she can't define. She tries to put on a smile: it doesn't matter if it looks wrong, fake around the edges. She has to support Silvershine, even if it costs her some kind of feeling to do it.

"I'm happy for you," she says: not a lie, not all the way. It's only the specifics that have her upset. "You'll be the best mother."

"I never felt much like a warrior," Silvershine says. "I think I was meant to be a queen."

"Of course you were."

Sableshade licks her sister's cheek. She'd never been fond of blood and battle. "Tell everyone when you're ready," she tells her. "Or don't. Just move into the nursery when you have to and let everyone guess for themselves. Redsong's litter will love some new playmates. And the Clan loves kits. This is a good thing."

"As long as Nettlebreeze is the last to know," she agrees. "Otherwise the rumours will be all over the camp in an hour."

The pair share a smile. It's all over if their friend gets wind of the news.

"Go back to camp," Sableshade says, after a moment of silence. "I'll stay out for a while longer. Mark the border. Keep watch." The next border patrol will already be setting out, but her sister doesn't need to know. Perhaps she can join it if she hurries.

Silvershine nods and trundles back in the direction of camp. Does she look plumper? When will it be visible? More importantly, does Strongclaw know? She tries to shake the thoughts from her mind, but they're immovable, unavoidable. If he doesn't know, she's not about to break her word and tell him. He'll be good father - if that's what Silvershine wants - even if he needs to grow the hell up sometimes. She _must_ believe things will work out for them. It's the only thing she can hope for.

She starts walking again. Aimless, undirected - it's only subconscious instinct that keeps her from wandering across the border they share with ThunderClan. She's patrolled this path many times, and now it's muscle memory affixing her to it, running her along the course she knows best.

Why is this so jarring to her? She already knew Strongclaw and Silvershine were close. On some level, it feels like a betrayal: on the next, Sableshade knows this is not about her at all. She's so far removed it's laughable.

"I should feel special," she whispers to herself, forcefully, feeling the truth settle heavily over her shoulders. Silvershine has told Sableshade - and only Sableshade- because she trusts her above anybody else. She knows she'll keep the secret safe, and support her no matter the cost. Silvershine _chose_ her. Silvershine _loves_ her. _Let it be enough_ , she thinks. _Let me settle for that._

Her feet have ceased their pacing. She stands at a kind of crossroads. Literally, of course: the Thunderpath lies before her, smooth and pale and strange. There are thick cracks along its surface, seeping with shadows, looking sad and formidable all at once.

She looks up at meets the gaze of another cat. They're bright, thalassic blue, an enigmatic shade of skylight. Sableshade starts to smile.

"Strange meeting you here," Eaglestorm calls. His voice swallows the distance, easily: his words are loud, welcome, in her ears.

"It's almost like we… live nearby," she agrees. With a furtive glance in each direction, she takes her first step onto the Thunderpath. It's still warm from the heat of the sun. The other warrior mirrors her movements, her every careful step, until they meet in the middle. She looks up at him for a moment, comfortably dwarfed by his size. Even Strongclaw can't make her look so small by comparison.

"Hello," he rumbles.

He looks like escape.

"How are you?" she asks. "How are your nephews settling in as apprentices?"

"They're well. Spiderpaw fell in the creek yesterday… or was he pushed? Owlfrost fished him out."

"And you?" she persists. She remembers her carefully laid plans: how to let him down gently, and not start a bitter Clan war as a result. Sableshade's beginning to wonder why she crafted those plans in the first place. Why shouldn't she have a foot on each path? Why can't she claim Eaglestorm for her own? All her logic is starting to look, at best, dubious. When she looks at him - at the towering, piacular sight of him - the ache in her feels distant. Muted. It feels _better_.

She really feels like a coward, using Eaglestorm as a shield from her own self, but that will come to the surface later.

"Oh, you know," Eaglestorm says idly, raising his head to stare into the sky. "I've been thinking a lot. About one thing. About you." He looks at her again with those aquatic eyes, and she begins to feel like she can swim.

Sableshade rolls her eyes. "Am I really so fascinating?"

"Riveting," he purrs.

Sableshade feels the crossroads approaching: the moment where she should choose to leave, where she realizes she has to go. She was made better than this, than an illicit romance by the roadside, and she must think of her vows.

Voices begin to approach, from her side of the border. The ShadowClan patrol. They're a minute away: one long, everlasting minute. Just enough time to get back to her side, the right side: just enough time to wander up to them and join the party. No harm, no foul. It's what she should do.

Instead, she looks up at Eaglestorm and nudges him into movement. They dash across the Thunderpath and into the undergrowth of the waiting forest. The shadows cloak them easily. His breath fans across her ear as they huddle beneath a hawthorn bush. There are a hundred fallen flowers underfoot, tiny and white, soft to the touch. ThunderClan territory doesn't seem so bad.

Eaglestorm looks at her. She can feel the weight of his gaze on her, the lingering anticipation it.

The patrol comes into sight. It's lead by Bramblenose. Sleetclaw and Sparkpool follow behind him, tailed by their two apprentices, Firepaw and Briarpaw. And, bringing up the rear - though she prayed he wouldn't be there, that she wouldn't have to see him, to have ever bitter thought and pulmonary pang amplified by his presence - he's there. Strongclaw. He strolls calmly enough, but it's clear he's lost in his own head, thinking of things bigger than this patrol. She must be staring at him, and Eaglestorm must notice, because his tail touches her flank, just softly. Just enough to ground her.

The patrol disappears out of sight, into the shallow forest beyond. She waits for them to turn around, to point at her and cry out, label her as some heinous, callow traitor. But they don't even pause.

They're left alone with the silence.

"Nice place you have here," she says, though her view's restricted by the branches all around them.

From here, ShadowClan territory looks a little dark, a little mysterious.

Eaglestorm snickers. "You can visit more often if you like it so much."

She can't think of anything else to say for a moment. All her words seem to dry up in his presence, evaporating like errant drops of water.

"Do you want to leave?" he asks, staring with her across the road.

She should. But she doesn't know if she can stand going back to camp yet, to fuss over her sister and play the conspiratorial nursemaid. First she must collect herself, carefully press herself into the mold that's been left for her to fill. A reasonable voice, one that might belong to Silvershine, tells her to hurry her ass back across that road before she breaches something ancient and irreversible. Before she has time to regret _any_ of this.

Sableshade feels a stirring of antipathy for all rationality.

"This is the moment where I'm supposed to tell you this will never work out, and I leave you here, and we both wind up alone." She turns her gaze upwards, where Eaglestorm's eyes glow luminous in the gloom.

"But you won't," Eaglestorm says, shifting closer, bringing his nose to her cheek. "Will you?"

And she doesn't move away. And she doesn't leave. And she stays, with him.

In her head is the sound of her sister's voice, telling her to stop, telling her that nothing can come of this: they'll make each other lonelier than they ever could have been otherwise. She has always listened to her sister. But, as her mind goes pleasantly blank, and those blue eyes are all she can see, she can't find it in her heart to obey.

* * *

She feels different the next morning.

Not wrong, exactly, but strange: as though she left camp in one shape and came back as another. When she wakes, she forgets for a moment: what she's done, what Silvershine bears inside her, what is now so remotely forbidden to her she hardly dares think his name. It floods back into her when she opens her eyes, but that rush of affection for her sister still resides in her, unquenchable, and she smiles at the thought of Eaglestorm.

Is she a coward? Is she, at least in one small, awful transgression, a traitor? Maybe. Perhaps. But no one has to know, and she never has to give voice to those antigodlin doubts.

Keeping the secret, of course, is the hardest part. It's easy to guard Silvershine's: she's always been protective of her sister, and it's no different now (and she loathes the thought of speaking the words, of admitting it to someone, both for Silvershine's sake and hers) but hers is never far from her mind or the tip of her tongue. She just wants to _tell_ someone, a friend, and they'd always been so supportive of the idea in the first place. She even considers Smokestrike. According to rumour, he may be of some help.

One day, one brumal afternoon close to the next Gathering, she almost tells Nettlebreeze. There seems to be some inhibition within her, starkly contesting her need to confess. But then she catches the gaze Stripethorn sends her, and the one she gives in return. Nettlebreeze has found a mature, suitable match for herself. Maybe she expects no less of Sableshade. Maybe everyone does.

Rainwing isn't even an option. She doesn't seem to be avoiding her so avidly, but there's still an awkward distance between them, one neither quite know how to cross. For all her guesses, she still has no clue what caused the rift, or what might have the power to mend it. She leaves well enough alone and doesn't speak a word to her estranged friend. She doesn't seem to care.

Meanwhile, as Redsong's pregnancy progresses, she tries to compare it to Silvershine's. While the older queen is evidently round and expectant, her sister is still sleek and slender. Sableshade has to seriously consider whether the slight bulge she sees on occasion - on just the right angle - is the bloom of new life or mere indigestion. Eventually, Specklefrost becomes the third to know, and she guards secrets like she guards her catmint. Everything is perfectly healthy, she assures them. Silvershine is almost a moon into her pregnancy, and it seems to be a good omen, that things should be running so smoothly. She is radiant. Sableshade can at least be happy for this.

Soon, Pinepaw and Steampaw have their warrior ceremony. Toadstar calls them all to attention, his voice warm and deep with authority. These are his kits - his firstborn - and he seems to burn with an urge to do things right, to the best of his ability. He names them Streamsong and Pinetail, and though the whole Clan cheers, he's the loudest of all. The scene is so much brighter than Sableshade's own, where Oakstar had cast a cryptic shadow over the whole affair. ShadowClan feels replete, fully whole again. Even their paranoia has eased.

Morningstorm has haunted them like a vengeful ghost, but the shade she casts wanes a little more each day.

Sableshade both dreads and looks forward to the imminent Gathering. It will be nice to see Eaglestorm, but will anyone notice their altered chemistry? Will things degrade into awkwardness between them? Will he still even like her at all? After last moon's Clan assembly, she decides to take a more relaxed approach, an aloof one. It's for appearances, after all. She'll speak only briefly to the ThunderClan tom, if she can help it. Toadstar is still trying to prove himself, and he might take a hard line on forbidden relations.

She bides her time quietly, and spends most of it with Silvershine, whenever she's in camp. And, though she tries not to, she watches Strongclaw's face whenever they're together. She analyzes it. It's becoming a bad habit.

She's doing such a thing when Toadstar ambles into the centre of camp to announce the Gathering party: Pinetail, Thornstreak, Strongclaw, Honeyleap, Tawnyfrost, Sableshade, Nettlebreeze, Specklefrost, Meadowmist, Firepaw, Ashpaw, Fussyfur, and Streamsong. It's a tidy party, even if it's lacking. Her friend and her father are the only allies she's been allotted.

Sableshade winces at the thought of walking into the Gathering without her anchor (Silvershine, of course). Crowds still send a strange sick feeling over her skin, like ants crawling through her fur. _I just have to adapt._

She needn't have really worried, in one regard. ShadowClan is the last to arrive at the Gathering, and with some indescribable feeling in her gut - like relief - she sees Eaglestorm is nowhere to be found. She nods at the few ThunderClanners she _does_ know - Lilymist, Honeypaw, and Brackenflight, to whom she's been briefly introduced - and settles on the outskirts of the Gathering with Nettlebreeze and Strongclaw. Thornstreak hangs around nearby, exchanging gruff pleasantries with a white RiverClan tom. As per usual, the WindClan warriors form a close huddle in the center of the clearing, warding off outsiders with baleful stares. Sableshade enjoys the look of shock everyone wears when Toadstar trots right up to the other leaders and joins them, rightfully, on the Great Rock. He greets them, cordial, professional. Beneath the surprise, the other leaders may even look relieved.

"Look at their faces," Nettlebreeze scoffs. "Hah. It was almost completely worth it for shock value alone."

"If you can't count on ShadowClan to keep things exciting, then who can you trust?" Sableshade asks, though she doesn't wholly agree. She'd rather the whole insane deputy saga had never happened, but she might be alone in that regard. Her friend clearly doesn't share the sentiment.

"It's our StarClan-bound duty," Nettlebreeze claims, loftily. "I was put on this earth to instigate drama and drama alone."

Sableshade simply has to laugh. Nettlebreeze has a flair for… something.

For perhaps the first time in her entire life, Sableshade pays complete attention to the leaders as they address the Clans. Toadstar, the proverbial elephant, is the first to speak.

"Many - no doubt most - will be surprised to see me standing here," he begins. His voice is strong, and carries well over the clearing. Despite his sonance, everyone strains to catch his words. "You would expect to see Oakstar or Morningstorm in the place I now occupy. I bear bad news for you."

The other Clans begin to murmur, a telltale rumble rising in the air. Gossip, for this brief second, is rife.

"Oakstar is dead."

The murmurs don't cease, but it seems no one is truly surprised by this. They've all been waiting for this news.

"Morningstorm was unable to assume the leadership post as she was unfit for the role," Toadstar says. Even now, he can't besmirch his sister. He will always care. "Let it be known she is a danger to both my Clan and yours."

"What are we to do?" Crowstar asks, far from upset. "If we find her?"

Toadstar dips his head. He walks a fine line, but it's his Clan he must prioritize, not the memory or the promise of his sister. "Use all reasonable measures," he says. "It's not safe to approach her alone."

"And you're the leader now?" Fernstar replies, scanning him with a critical eye. "Congratulations."

"You may all address me as Toadstar," he says in return. "StarClan has accepted me as the leader of ShadowClan, and so have all my warriors. Our new deputy is Honeyleap. Under the guidance of new leadership, ShadowClan is prospering.

As for our Clan's other news, we have added Pinetail and Streamsong to our warrior's ranks. We have five new apprentices. We enter Leafbare as a strong, single unit."

The leader smiles at the gathered cats and turns back to the leaders, giving them all a respectful nod. The murmurs have died down, but only just: still, everyone seems to like Toadstar, and accept his new position. Popular opinion is fickle, or else it was never behind Morningstorm in the first place. She did have a flair for intimidation.

"Let me be the first to wish you luck," Fernstar says warmly, striding forward a step to take his place. "ThunderClan has had a quiet moon, and while we've scented rogues near our border, we've seen no trace of them."

Sableshade nearly stiffens, a reaction only overridden by the higher function in her brain that tells her, _It isn't you. It isn't you. Eaglestorm made sure to cover our tracks and you_ watched _, you flea-brain._ Then the words connect in her head, properly, and she wonders if it's the same scent stalking the ShadowClan border, the one they cannot place or define.

"In other news, we have a new medicine cat apprentice, Oatpaw."

She allows herself to react to this, to squint at the foot of the Great Rock. Sure enough, it's Eaglestorm's nephew, almost a slender, paler version of the other tom. The senior medicine cat, a fluffy grey she-cat, ruffles the fur on his head as the Clan turns eyes towards them. She must congratulate Eaglestorm about this, when next she sees him - but she can she? Should she stay away from the personal? Eaglestorm has his own life and family… so what can she offer him? He already has important figures around him, and they ought to matter more than one trifling affair with a ShadowClan warrior. Maybe she should calm things down, for _his_ sake if not for hers.

Fernstar breezes on, so peacefully unaware of the conflict brewing within her. "With leafbare on the horizon, our resources have not depleted. We are well equipped to handle the cold and help the less fortunate, if required."

The offer seems well-intended enough, but she glances back at Toadstar as the words leave her mouth, almost implicating him as an inferior leader, one less worthy to lead a Clan through winter. Toadstar doesn't seem offended: he merely smiles at the she-cat, well-mannered as ever.

Crowstar eyes the two before stepping up to the plate. He strides through any residual awkwardness lingering in the air and begins to speak without preamble. "RiverClan has had a prosperous moon. There are more fish in the river than usual this year. The Clan is as well-fed as ever. My mate has kitted and given birth to my sons, Pikekit and Stonekit. And, after a sad and regrettable injury, Creekthorn has become an elder before his time. That is all RiverClan has to say."

He has barely vacated his spot before Splashstar barges her way to the front, full of self-righteous brusquerie and yet more omens of things to pass.

"Friends," she begins, loudly, a little off-pitch warble in her voice. Sableshade thinks Splashstar is not even her acquaintance, let alone friend. "I have longed for this day for many moons."

"What madness is she about to spew forth?" Nettlebreeze asks, scowling. Prophets should be medicine cats, not leaders. Splashstar hardly counts as either.

"I do not come alone," she proclaims.

"Imaginary friends are _figments,_ " Strongclaw mutters. "They don't count as company."

"My friend has been scorned, reviled, cast out. But they have the most honorable cause a warrior can ask for. They have the change we must embrace. We will listen to her or we will _perish._ I have seen the darkness of our future without her blinding light. Illuminate us, daughter of the stars."

And from the darkness behind the stone swarms a familiar figure, a flash of deeply burnished gold, to land like a great and predatory eagle on the place she has coveted for so long. She smiles wide, smiles darkly.

She sees Strongclaw flinch, but she _feels_ it, the shuddering of the air as he recoils from the sight.

Morningstorm, in the flesh.

 _Follow me or die_ , she said. None of them had followed her. They all chose death, and here is the deliverance.

"You may not believe me," says Morningstorm, "but I come with grave tidings."

ShadowClan bristles in the assembly, staring up at her with a brewing mixture of hate and dismay. Strongclaw has gone stiff and silent, as cold and unmoving as the touch of rigor mortis. The clearing seems to darken, by imperceptible shades. Clouds swarm the sky. She _is_ grave tidings.

"There is an anomaly, a disease in your midst," she declares. The leaders mill behind her, unsure, while Splashstar fixes them with a look of absolution. Her claws are unsheathed. They glint in the moonlight.

Toadstar looks devastated, _afraid_.

They have heard this speech before.

"I want to strengthen you. I want to rip away that awful, pathetic capacity for pain you all harbour in your hearts. I want to purge you of the blight that keeps you small, weak, fettered."

She looks mad, as she speaks: legs thrown wide, claws anchored to the stone, a diabolic light burning in her eyes. The Clans watch her, this descent, unaware they're all tied down and sinking with her too. WindClan seems enraptured. They lean into her malevolence.

"To fall in love," the mad queen muses, "is to kill yourself. It is to throw yourself onto the pyre and burn. It is a poison in your veins, a corruption, a taint that has prevailed for _too long_. Those in love fail their duties, their Clan, and the Code we hold so dear. There is no crime they would not commit or law they would hesitate to break. Doesn't that sound like a danger to you all? To your Clans? How can you uphold the Code, as you've sworn to do, when you're pathologically indisposed to do so?

You claim to be warriors. Well, I have a cause for you. A cure. A purification."

The Gathering ripples, unsettled by her words, her measured, awful rational. Sableshade waits for the catch, the moment of revolution. The last threat.

"I proposed this all to my Clan. ShadowClan. Old age or sickness was not the killer of dear dead Oakstar. He was murdered by his own love, day by day, until his last life dried up and threw him back to the stars. _That_ is love. _That_ is how it chokes us, deludes us, chains us.

ShadowClan refused to see sense. They chased my from my territory and my rightful place. They chose the purge."

Sableshade begins to feel a chill, a surge of ungodly knowing. This is the moment she's waited for. This is the fulfillment of Morningstorm's last promise.

"I began with an idea. Tiny, fledgling. I turned it into a crusade. I have the might of WindClan and the loveless behind me. If you do not accept my way and the Code I have perfected, then you are my enemy.

I kill my enemies. I rid the world of them."

Clouds swell above them all and blot out the stars, one by one.

"What are you saying?' Toadstar calls, though a sudden wind has picked up and he must fight to throw the words out before the air snatches them away. "Is this war?"

She doesn't even turn to look at him. She stares down at the clearing with darkness in her eyes, a brittle, crackling convalescence. The air stills around her, just to let her speak, to let her break hell open upon them.

"This is war."

And the clearing goes black as the clouds snuff out the moon, and the first clap of thunder rocks them all.

* * *

The Gathering turns into a swarm: a hive of chaos, panicked and senseless. Warm bodies riot all around her, and in the darkness, Sableshade can't pick a single face from the disarray. It's hard to breathe, hard to take a step, when her chest on fire and her legs are lighter than air. The crescendo on panic washes over her, drowns her in the noise. Nettlebreeze is gone. Thornstreak has disappeared. She will be trampled, or Morningstorm will find and her slit her throat, loathe to break a promise.

This tangible feeling seems to be the End.

A face swims before her, some kind of cream-and-tabby, staring her down as the Gathering implodes. She knows, without really recognising him, that it's Strongclaw. He won't leave her to the darkness.

"Sableshade! Sableshade! Follow me, this way!"

He nudges her to her feet, despite the quaver in her legs, and he leads her from the clearing, the brightness of his tail some kind of beacon to her eyes. The sky seethes above their head, full of divine rage, as spears of lightning rent apart the clouds. The forest is lit by odd, ephemeral flashes, turning the familiar shapes of trees into things tall and twisted. The darkness seems better than this frantic light.

Strongclaw leads her through the forest until they can no longer hear anything from the Gathering or those that flee from the anarchy.

"Wait, wait," Sableshade says, as a Thunderpath looms before their feet, with the rich scent of the marshes drifting just beyond. "We can't go back to camp. Who knows what Morningstorm has planned. She might have engineered this chaos for a reason." Morningstorm could isolate them, disorientate them, and terrify them all in one fell swoop. She might be enacting her vengeance upon wayward ShadowClan warriors at this very moment. It's only what she promised.

Strongclaw, silent until now, stares into the shadows. Perhaps he sees his mother in every ambient flash of lightning. "You're right. Everyone in camp can fend for themselves."

 _Against all of WindClan? Is that why their party was so small?_

She whispers, "Silvershine." Her sister is too far away to even hear the echo of that word.

Strongclaw takes a step back from the road. "She's with Pepperstripe, and Smokestrike, and your mother. They'll all be okay."

She can only nod. They're probably safer right now than she is, out here in the unknown with only Strongclaw to fight beside her.

"As soon as the storm finishes-" Strongclaw says this while looking up at the storm that has no inclination of moving on, "we'll go back to camp."

She feels almost cowardly, though there's nothing brave about rushing headlong into unknown danger.

She thinks instead about the Gathering, the precise moment of its ending.

"StarClan sounds furious," Sableshade remarks, coming to stand at his side. "I hope the other Clans listen to _them_ and not her."

"StarClan isn't the one threatening war," he reminds her, though there's no vindication in it. "Come on. We should find some shelter." He begins walking, quick, quiet, set with purpose. They leave the faint shadow of WindClan's territory behind them. Thunder resonates through the air again, calamitous, and breaks the sky apart.

The rain just beginning to fall is a pale noise, in its wake.

"Here," Strongclaw says, just as the water begins to pool around his feet. He scurries over the roots of an old oak, beelining for the hollow at its center. Sableshade hurries after him, shaking her wet pelt with every step. The space inside the tree trunk is tiny, cramped, with a vaguely mouse-like odour to it, but she has no alternative. She throws herself inside and curls up, the wet spikes of her fur brushing against Strongclaw with her every breath. It's a particular kind of paresthesia against her skin, the way every atom of her seems to remember she's alive. She wonders if he burns the same way.

But he can't - this is something she should stop forgetting, or glossing over, or ignoring entirely.

She should say something - comfort him, maybe, make sure the reappearance of his mother hasn't thrown him off some distant, metaphorical deep end. Is he plotting revenge right now? Murder? She tries to sneak a glance at him, at his expression, only to catch him watching her instead.

Stupidly, she asks, "What?" She manages to sound far blunter than intended. That seems to be one of her best anti-skills.

"Are you alright?" he asks, not bothering to look away.

"I'm pretty sure I was supposed to ask _you_ that."

"Well, you answer first," he says, pragmatically. An echo of the lightning touches his eyes, turns them to blue sparks. Even through that she can see his smile, even if it's not really whole, or hinged in the right spot.

"I'm fine," she mutters. Her mind turns, in flashes, back to the unbidden chaos, the immovable weight she had found within herself, the utter inability she had to stand or flee or speak. To be gone from that place is an unequivocal relief. "I… panicked. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't found me."

She hates to speak the words, to voice that vulnerability, but she knows Strongclaw already understands.

"And I don't know what I would've done if you weren't there," he says darkly. "Something stupid, probably."

She has to scold him, to chastise him with improbable sensibility in her voice. He can't afford to think like that, if he wants to live through Silvershine's pregnancy and see his impending fatherhood realized. Does he know yet? He doesn't seem changed, altered in any way, but perhaps she hasn't paid enough attention. Perhaps her focus has slipped too far south of the border.

"She knows how to make an entrance," Sableshade muses. The surprise of Toadstar's leadership now seems bland in comparison.

He just snorts. If only that was her legacy.

There's a silence for a moment, where the night is only lit by the candlelight of their eyes, and the rain is a mindless hum as it falls.

"Sableshade-" he begins, at the exact moment she starts to speak, unsure of where she's going and only knowing she'll end up somewhere important.

"You go," she says, though he hushes her and refuses to speak another word.

What will it be? What secret will spill from her lips?

"What happened with Rainwing?" she asks. It's a surprise, even to her. But her skills of deduction haven't been enough, and Strongclaw must know _something_.

He just says, "Ahh." Slow, long-suffering, vain. "I suppose it can't hurt much to tell you. Everyone else knows."

"Oh, do they?" she says, witheringly. Of course. Of course this all would slide right under her nose, even as she searched for the answer. Strongclaw doesn't seem to notice this tone in her voice: if he does, he ignores it admirably. _Even… even Pepperstripe? Surely not_?

"You see, I don't hate her," he begins, with a kind of acerbic tone that hints otherwise. "At least, I won't if she stops with her petty dramas. And she doesn't really hate me. She just wants to."

"You're not clearing _anything_ up."

"She professed her love for me," Strongclaw says, shrugging, as if to say, _oh no, not again_.

Sableshade nods as all the pieces of the puzzle slide into place. She could've guessed as much. "And what did you say?"

"She figured out fairly quickly that I had feelings for someone else."

"Oh," she says. A tiny, cramped sound for their tiny, cramped abode. "Well. Your mother would be disappointed."

But he has always aimed for as much.

"You're not going to ask me who… who it is?" Strongclaw replies, a little bemused, a touch of something hesitant in his words.

"I already know."

If only she'd realized it sooner. If only she could've seen Silvershine and Strongclaw for what they really were, without the fog of self-denial shrouding her eyes.

Strongclaw shifts, and the sound of his movement seems catastrophically loud in their little den. "So that's why you've been a little distant over the past moon." He sounds disappointed, but what is he asking for? Jubilation? A loud and joyous proclamation of her support?

"Yes," she admits, slowly, drawing the word out of herself with no small amount of force. "But that's what you need right now. And me. Mostly me."

He clears his throat. "If only Rainwing could be so sensible."

They don't even know where Rainwing _is_ right now, but it seems better to joke, to think of her safe and hale.

"Oh, everything will work out for you," Sableshade says, twitching her paw against his and drawing it away before she can think of leaving it there. "Sooner rather than later, probably."

In a moon, she means.

She looks up, but she can't even see his eyes anymore. It's been a long night. Perhaps the thought of Silvershine right now is too raw for him, the way it is for her. At least they can share that.

"Let's sleep," she says softly. She lays her head on her paws, but sometime in the night, they end up on his instead.

And she curls up against the curve of her belly, and he snores into her ear, and she was never this close to Eaglestorm.

* * *

i told uriekuki that sable/eagle is endgame because it's not a tpatp fic without a forbidden love interest, eventual murder, and altogether tragedy

part two will be out...sometime? idk


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